A Multipurpose and Power Quality Improved Electric Vessels Charging Station for the Seaports

To avoid air and noise pollution on seaports, the use of electric vessels and shore-to-ship power supply based charging station on seaports are in trend, which is also known as cold ironing (CI) infrastructure. In the starting stage, electric vessels charging stations are being implemented on the most busiest commercial ports, where modern electronic devices are used to serve different types of vessels. These devices only take care of the quality of output power. However, on the input side, it creates a serious harmonic issue. During CI, megawatt range of power is supplied to the ships, so generated harmonics and interharmonics in the high-power supply based charging system become more dangerous for the grid. In this article, we propose a novel power quality improved cold ironing (PQICI) system (charging mechanism) to overcome this issue. Moreover, due to inherent multipurpose useability, this novel PQICI is able to supply different types of power to various types of vessels, such as ac power, dc power, 50 Hz frequency, 60 Hz frequency, single phase, three phases, three-wire network, four-wire network, five-wire network, and different ac and dc voltages. Furthermore, this PQICI supply system is capable of serving four vessels at a time. In every type of loading condition with different kinds of power supply mode, the PQICI maintains the power quality on the input side, with fulfilling the varieties of the power demand of vessels. The capability of the developed PQICI system is tested for different types of ships and vessels on the simulation platform as well as through real-time hardware-in-the-loop experimentation. On IEEE standard 519, satisfactory test results on both platforms show the efficiency of the developed system and its control mechanism.

Automated summary

The use of electric vessels and shore-to-ship power supply based charging stations, also known as cold ironing (CI) infrastructure, is a growing trend to avoid air and noise pollution on seaports. However, these charging stations create a serious harmonic issue on the input side. This article proposes a novel power quality improved cold ironing (PQICI) system to overcome this issue.