Optimising design and power management in energy-efficient marine vessel power systems: a literature review

The conventional marine vessel power systems typically have the potential to improve their fuel consumption and their emissions. This can be done by redesigning the system configuration, the machinery and the power management strategy. The addition of options in power management allows for the running of individual power sources closer to their optimal operating point. However, this immediately raises questions about how to redesign the system and how to operate it to maximise the benefits. The information needed to answer these questions is often scattered around separate sectors of the marine industry. The system integrator needs to be able to combine the complex dependencies of these individual sectors to formulate the big picture that describes the whole power system. Numerical optimisation algorithms provide solutions to develop methodologies to solve multi-variable and potentially multi-objective problems. This literature review presents the authors' findings of design and power management optimisation cases in marine vessel power systems.