To reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of ships, hybrid power systems are becoming more common. Hybrid systems combine power generation with energy storage. The energy storage enables the power generating components to run at more efficient operating points. A well known combination is that of a diesel genset and a battery. The ideal combination of the type, size, and amount of power system components depends highly on the operating profile of the vessel. However, this operating profile can vary greatly between voyages, or during the lifetime of a vessel, thus changing the ‘ideal’ power plant. A modular power system (MPS) can provide the solution: a reconfigurable power plant, where components can be added, removed, or replaced.
To control the power-split between the different components an energy management system (EMS) is required. Most EMSs are designed and optimized for a single power plant configuration. This means they are not capable of dealing with an MPS. For this thesis an EMS was developed which is capable of dealing with an MPS: an MPS EMS. The developed EMS was made for ships with electric propulsion. An additional requirement was for the EMS to be real-time capable, so it can be used outside of a simulated environment, i.e. in a real ship. The objective of the EMS would be to minimize fuel consumption.
It was investigated which EMS control strategy would be suited for an MPS EMS. The equivalent consumption minimization strategy (ECMS) combined with the dual decomposition method was found to be suited for this purpose.
The developed EMS can automatically adapt all parameters responsible for stable control of the system. It does this based on the properties of the installed components. Most important of these properties are: minimum and maximum power output, maximum ramp-rate, and the efficiency curve.
The EMS was tested with four different combinations of installed components, and two different operating profiles. Additionally, the effect of a component failure during a voyage was tested. A rule based (RB) EMS and a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) global optimization were used as benchmarks for the fuel consumption. The results show that the developed EMS is capable of controlling various power plant configurations in different conditions, while keeping all components within their allowed operating ranges. For one of the tested operating profiles the fuel consumption using ECMS was 1.9-4.0% higher than when using the global optimization, which is comparable to the results found in literature. However, for the other tested operating profile the developed EMS was outperformed by even the RB EMS, by 1.1-2.1%. This was caused by inaccuracies of the approximation used for the efficiency curve of the gensets. In the simulations where one of the gensets fails during the voyage the EMS was able to automatically adapt to optimize fuel consumption using only the remaining components. Fuel consumption did increase slightly compared to no failures, as expected.

Over the coming decades the worldwide fleet of ships will have to change to reduce emissions. Hybridisation of the propulsion system is a stepping stone to full electrification, which is required to reduce emissions of the maritime sector to zero. In hybrid propulsion systems, clutches are used to switch between drive engines when transitioning between operational modes. The operation of clutches is indicated to generate significant disturbances in propulsion systems, however, this impact is overlooked in hybrid propulsion simulation studies in the scientific literature. The identified research gap is addressed in this thesis by simulating propulsion mode transition in a hybrid propulsion system and analysing the impact of clutch operation, using a model developed for this purpose. A hybrid propulsion system is defined by introducing multi disk wet friction clutches in a reference propulsion system consisting of a 9.1 MW diesel engine in parallel with a 3 MW electric motor. A broad scope of impact measures, that includes the electric load on the power system and the temperature development of the clutch, is defined and the system is thoroughly modelled to enable evaluation of these measures. The transmission system is modelled with a higher fidelity than typically applied in propulsion system simulation studies to enable assessment of the basic vibratory behaviour of the transmission system. The considered propulsion modes transitions are between diesel and electric propulsion. To enable these transitions, three transition control approaches with an increasing degree of sophistication are implemented. The developed model is used to perform simulations, from which it is concluded that torsional vibrations, gear hammer and a drop in propeller speed characterise the significant impact of clutch operation on hybrid propulsion systems in propulsion mode transitions. It is also concluded that the impact of clutch operation can be limited by implementing an appropriate propulsion control approach for the transition. A torque controlled handover of drive torque between engines is identified as a suitable approach. However, the induction machine switching from torque to speed control introduces power peaks in the load profile that have the potential to severely disrupt the stability of the ships power system. It is finally concluded that the temperature development of the clutch during the propulsion mode transitions is not significant. It is shown in this thesis that there can be a significant impact on the propulsion system as a result of the operation of clutches in propulsion mode transitions. Therefore, this impact has to be taken into consideration when designing hybrid propulsion systems. The model described in this thesis can be used to predict the impact of clutch operation in the early stages of the design process. Furthermore, the model can be used to develop and evaluate propulsion mode transition control approaches.