Modeling and Performance Enhancement of Tidal Energy Based Seaport Microgrid for Shipboard Loads Using DSTATCOM

Energy efficiency with environmental sustainability is a significant prerequisite for the global shipping industry. The modern ship industry is going through a paradigm shift by developing renewable energy-based sea-port microgrids. The advancements in power converter devices in the last two decades facilitate this fast-growing transition. However, integration of these variable inverter-based renewable (IBR) sources is facing different operational and logistic challenges like power quality and resiliency, especially in pulsating and dynamic load environments of ship/marine vessels. This paper gives the overall modeling of a multi-energy-based islanded microgrid integrating tidal energy for shipboard loads. The MATLAB/Simulink-based model is developed to understand the co-existence of pulse load with other loads in the alternate energy-based electrical environment. Additionally, a distribution static synchronous compensator (DSTATCOM) is employed to enhance the system dynamics and mitigate voltage sag introduced due to the interaction of loads of different characteristics. The simulation results show the improvement in overall dynamic voltage stability and power quality of parallel connected hybrid energy sources. Moreover, results obtained under different fault conditions prove the efficiency of DSTATCOM in boosting the system's resiliency.