A Comprehensive Review of Maritime Microgrids: System Architectures, Energy Efficiency, Power Quality, and Regulations

The recent trends to design more efficient and versatile maritime (both marine and offshore) vessels have attracted significant attention toward high penetration of power electronics systems in electric ship systems, which trigged a variety of power system architectures in civilian and naval ships. The availability of advanced power electronics converters further supported to improve maneuverability, efficiency, and compactness at reduced greenhouse gas emission in marine vessels. The fast-growing penetration of these power electronics converters adds a number of advantages to the ship power system. However, risk factors associated with the quality and reliability of the whole system should be considered. Power quality issues in marine networks have been reported from recent field accidents, therefore, the marine regulatory bodies need to revise and/or develop new power quality standards to ensure the reliability and scrutinize the safety of the whole ship system and crews. This paper presents 1) a classification of marine vessels and their power system architectures; 2) power electronics converters topologies and their non-linear characteristics; 3) control and protection architecture; 4) energy efficiency indicators; 5) a comprehensive case study to elaborate power quality in the marine system, and; 6) extensive discussion about power quality standards and highlights the urgency to update existing power quality standards.