A multi-criteria approach for assessment of maritime sector energy systems

This paper describes a multi-criteria tool for the performance comparison of alternative and conventional on board energy systems for maritime sector, both for hotel and propulsion loads, depending on the mission taken into account. The tool, named HELM (Helper for Energy Layouts in Maritime applications), carries out this analysis based on an extended and up-to-date market database of many technologies in terms of power units and suitable fuel storage systems. A wide range of maps has been created, correlating costs, volumes, weights, emissions and fuel environmental hazards with the installed power and the operational hours, given by the user as input. In this work, different maritime vessels typologies are investigated and the choice of the best solution is performed for each one, considering the single evaluation parameters. It is worth noting that the multi-criteria analysis carried out has a general approach, allowing it to give preliminary information on the energy system, in order to respect new requirements (e.g. more and more stringent normative in terms of pollutant emissions in ports and restricted areas). HELM can be used for many design approaches, either for a new ship project or for already existing ships retrofit; furthermore, the database can be easily extended to other generation and storage technologies