Coordinated Multi-energy Dispatch of Ship Microgrid with Reefer System

This paper proposes a coordinated energy dispatch of the multi-energy ship microgrid with the consideration of the thermal energy requirements of the refrigerated container system (reefer). The proposed combined electricity, cooling, and heating network consists of multiple energy sources (diesel generators, auxiliary electric boiler, auxiliary electric chiller, and gas turbine) and energy storage units (electrical and thermal storage). It aims to minimize the emission cost, the storage operating cost, and startup/shutdown cost of the generation units while maximizing their efficiency. With the help of the piece-wise linearization technique, the coordinated multi-energy dispatch model is formulated as a goal-based multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming problem that can be effectively solved by the commercial solvers. Goal programming (Priori approach) does not require the mapping of the Pareto-front or the solution space and hence saving additional computational power requirements. A case study is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed dispatching scheme and the result indicates the improvement in dispatch flexibility by coordinating the electrical power generation with cooling and heating requirements.