Technical design aspects of harbour area grid for shore to ship power: State of the art and future solutions

The cheap quality fuel used by diesel engines in marine vessels during a stay at berth is an environmental threat, and its widespread gaseous emissions are harmful to human health. Shore to ship power technology has been an essential requirement for reducing the emissions of maritime transport at harbour areas. Although this technology has already been implemented at certain seaports in several countries like the USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, and Belgium, it is facing some technical and regulation problems. Shore to ship supply can be emission-free, economical and sustainable solution while utilising the renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind energies along with battery energy storages. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of technical aspects, practices, existing standards and the key challenges in designing and modelling of a harbour grid for shore to ship power supply. This paper presents state-of-the-art and future marine solutions, discusses shore to ship power technology while considering voltage, frequency, power and other technical requirements of vessels at onboard and onshore. Moreover, this paper contributes in designing suitable models for the harbour area smart grids that can facilitate both onshore power supply as well as charging of batteries for the future hybrid and electric vessels.