The Future of Solar Energy in Marine Applications

Abstract

The objective of this master's thesis is to investigate the current and future technical and economic feasibility of PV systems for marine applications. Two scenarios will be studied; a land-based PV power station to supply an in-land ferry in Norway and a PV system installed on a wind farm support vessel as a supplementary power source. The two scenarios are use cases that support the two research programmes ENERGIX and NEXUS, where Rolls-Royce Marine are participants. The simulation software PVsyst will be utilized in detail to perform computational simulations of different vessels, with focus on Key Performance Indicators, such as average produced energy per square meter given a certain operational area in the world. In addition, PVsyst will be used to perform an economic analysis.

The results show that the land-based PV power station has an annual average energy production of 132 kWh/m2. It produces 2 046 MWh/year, which equals 110 % of MF Amperes annual consumption. The energy cost from the system will be 1.25 NOK/kWh. The PV system on the wind farm support vessel, Edda Passat, has an annual average energy production of 173 kWh/m2. This corresponds to a production of 87.9 MWh/year, which accounts for 2.86 % of Edda Passats annual consumption. The energy cost for this system will be 0.5 NOK/kWh. The land-based system and the system on Edda Passat is estimated to have an energy payback time of 2.5 and 2 years, respectively. In addition, the life-cycle analysis emissions could be reduced by 90-95 % by using power from solar PV instead of oil and gas. The future potential of solar PV is promising with an expected increase in efficiency of 26.4 % for monocrystalline Si-cells over the next 10 years, and a predicted total system cost reduction of 53 % by 2025. Based on this, the land-based system could produce 2 587 MWh/year with an energy cost of 0.59 NOK/kWh, and the system on Edda Passat could produce 111 MWh/year with an energy cost of 0.24 NOK/kWh by 2028. The future energy cost from the PV system on Edda Passat and the land-based system corresponds to 12 % and 30 % of present marine gas oil costs, respectively. Solar modules have a lifetime of at least 25 years and are classified for use in marine environments by the International Electrotechnical Commission. These numbers show that solar PV is an important part of power generation for future solutions in marine applications.