Investigation of hybrid power plant configurations for an offshore vessel with co-simulation approach

Abstract

This work presents a full-system simulator consisting of a generic power system integrated with a vessel model and real-time capabilities. The whole system simulation facilitates evaluating the overall system performance by considering components’ interactions according to the maneuvering and environmental effects. Indeed, flexibility in the configuration and size of the power system enables the investigation of different concepts according to various maneuvering scenarios. Co-simulation approach is employed to integrate the models with various domains effectively. In addition, the bond graph modeling strategy as a power based method is used. The developed power system contains a diesel genset, a PEMFC, a battery with average electrical components, and a power management system. The configuration of the power system and size of power sources are modifiable. Various hybrid configurations and power capacities can be designed with validated power sources against marine vendors. In addition, the integrated offshore supply vessel with Dynamic Positioning (DP) and cruise controller and sea state forces induces the corresponding load demand of the operation to the power system. In summary, different operation scenarios with sea states, the thrusters’ states and allocation algorithm, DC link voltage, power electrical converters controller, and fuel consummations are captured in one model framework. To demonstrate the application of the model and emphasis the importance of total system simulation, three power system configurations are designed and simulated with two operational modes of DP and cruise with various sea states.