The application of hybrid photovoltaic system on the ocean-going ship : engineering practice and experimental research

Abstract

The constant development of electronic inverter technology has played a key role in promoting the exploration and development of solar ships. For the large-scale ocean-going ship platform, the critical issue of applying solar photovoltaic (PV) system is integrating PV equipment into the ship power system (SPS) without changing its original structure. This paper compares the existent technical differences for applying the off-grid and grid-connected PV system in the SPS and proposes the basic design principles for marine integration applications. The 5000 PCTC ro-ro ship is set as the application object, on which a hybrid PV system with large-capacity lithium battery storage device is designed and installed as an independent subsystem. The typical feature of this hybrid PV system is that it can implement operation mode switching between off-grid and grid-connected, according to the evaluation on solar radiation resource, power load requirement and state of charge in the lithium battery. The test results show that this PV system has a stable operation characteristic under different operation modes. In addition, this ship-based PV power system has automatic and reliable operation management capability, which could effectively reduce manual control frequency and maintenance workload of a marine engineer.