Hybrid renewable energy system for ocean going platforms

Renewable energy systems that extract power from sustainable sources such as wind, wave and solar can provide clean energy to a range of marine applications. Currently a major challenge is in providing an uninterrupted power supply, given the variation and uncertainty in these renewable energy sources. To deal with the unpredictable nature of renewable energy resources, this paper investigates the use of hybrid systems (systems that harvest multiple sources) to reduce the variation and uncertainty of the power generated. Considering the use of multiple renewable energy resources including solar, wind and wave, this paper first evaluates the available energy resources and the technical recoverable power using open-source, yearly, global, meteorological datasets. Based on the technical recoverable potential the complimentary features between solar and wind resources are investigated and compared to the propulsive power demand of various sized ocean going platforms and routes. The analysis shows that the resources can be complementary and that hybrid systems are more suitable for small vehicles, craft or maritime robotics system such as autonomous surface and underwater vehicles and oceanographic buoys.