Sustainable Cold-Ironing at Seaport Microgrids for Power Management with Fuzzy-Based Droop Control Approach

Rising emissions in marine transportation sector leads to increased adoption of electricity-based cold-ironing (CI) facilities at seaports. Direct dependency on utility grid for CI facility can be avoided by incorporating energy storage systems, and renewable energy sources at seaports. A more viable option is the formation of a seaport microgrid by integrating multiple ship-board microgrids (SMGs) through port-based charging infrastructure. This paper proposes a grid connected ship-based seaport microgrid for efficient power sharing in a CI facility as a solution. Traditional power sharing relies on physical communication-based control in multiple microgrids which can be complex and costly. This paper utilizes a communication-less approach depending on multi-mode decentralized fuzzy based droop control, enabling efficient power sharing between SMGs and ships. This approach is particularly beneficial for autonomous ships and islands where traditional port electrification may not be technically feasible. The proposed power management scheme is validated on MATLAB® Simulink platform to obtain results after exhaustive numerical simulations.