Robust Coordination of a Hybrid AC/DC Multi-Energy Ship Microgrid with Flexible Voyage and Thermal Loads

This paper studies the robust operation of a novel hybrid AC/DC multi-energy ship (MES) microgrid with flexible thermal loads and voyage. Apart from the diesel generators and battery storage, the photovoltaic system, combined cooling heat and power (CCHP) unit, thermal storage and power-to-thermal conversion unit are also included. Then, to guarantee a safe and reliable voyage, the diverse uncertainties from renewable energies, onboard power loads and outdoor temperature are addressed by a robust coordination method. This method coordinates all the onboard units in different timescales by the two-stage robust optimization (RO) approach. In this regard, the ship operating cost is minimized under the worst case of uncertainties, at the same time, all the operational constraints are fully satisfied. By the constraint linearization process, the robust coordination model is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem and solved by the efficient Cplex solver. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the case study and comparisons with the existing ship operation benchmarks. The simulation results indicate that our method could reduce the ship operating cost and immune against the diverse uncertainties.