Guest Editorial Special Issue on Electrified Ship Technologies

WORLDWIDE demand for electrified vessels is growing rapidly, driven by environmental, fuel cost, and performance considerations. Recent technical advancements in power distribution architectures for electrified ships, including medium voltage direct current (MVdc) and hybrid MVdc/MVac infrastructures, have paved the way for application-specific research for shipboard systems. These enhancements have resulted in ambitious goals for power density, efficiency, and reliability metrics to marshal a new generation of electrified ships. The pursuit of these goals has been the specific focus of the IEEE Electric Ship Technologies Symposium (ESTS) since its inception in 2005. ESTS is a biennial workshop that is dedicated to the advancement of the technologies and concepts that undergird and support the development of electric ships. For the first time in ESTS history, the 2023 offering of ESTS has partnered with IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification to extend the reach of ESTS by offering this Special Issue on ship electrification. The articles in this Special Issue represent extended and peer-reviewed versions of many of the contributions to ESTS 2023, along with other contributed articles that share a common emphasis on the pursuit of these same objectives.