Energy efficient control of electric driven vessels including current effects

Energy consumption and emissions in shipping are playing an expanding role due to their impact on climate change. Combined with the shortage of nautical staff, automation and autonomy concepts move into the focus. Autonomous ships offer the opportunity to increase energy efficiency through intelligent control and trajectory planning. Given the example of an electric driven vessel it is shown how energy demands can be reduced by taking disturbances, such as water currents, into account in trajectory planning. For this, trajectory tracking is performed with a model predictive control approach. Therefore, an overall model of the ship with two effectors that are operated by electric drives (actuators) as an alternative to diesel or gasoline engines is used. The energy demand is investigated on the basis of the energy level of a high voltage battery that delivers the power to electrical machines.