A team of researchers coordinated by Prof. Luigi Piegari of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano is participating with 13 other international partners in the V-ACCESS (Vessel Advanced Clustered and Coordinated Energy Storage Systems) project, funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme for the duration of three years.
There are more than 60.000 commercial vessels in operation worldwide which accounts for almost 3% of global CO2 emission and it is widely recognised that substantial CO2 savings can be achieved by integrating some forms of electrifications with batteries charged by shore power (possibly from renewable power sources). In this frame, innovative energy storage technologies can significantly improve the performance of batteries for of zero-emission waterborne transport, extending batteries lifetime, increasing the overall efficiency, so reducing (R&D and) operational costs.
V-ACCESS project aims to bring together expertise on supercapacitors, superconductive magnetic energy storage systems (SMES), design and control of shipboard power systems, power electronics, lifetime cycle analysis, and ship classification to increase the technology readiness level (TRL) of hybrid storage systems – i.e. combining a battery with either supercapacitors, SMES, or both. The goal is to integrate a superconductive magnetic storage system and supercapacitors into an innovative DC shipboard microgrid to control flexibly the power sharing between the different energy storage technologies.
The partners of the project have already met at the IEEE ESARS ITEC 2023 inside the Venice Arsenal for the project’s kick-off meeting. Throughout this first get-together, participants planned the tasks and developments of the project in detail. The proposed technologies are analysed from the components levels, already tested, and validated at TRL3, and modelled into the vessel’s power system, also using control hardware-in-the-loop simulators. Then, the single components will be assembled together and integrated into a realistic shipboard power system available at the facilities and the technological demonstrator D-ETEF of the University of Trieste to reach TRL5.
Business models and standardisation needs will be deeply analysed and measures to unlock existing barriers and will be promoted in parallel to the technical knowledge generated from the project to ensure further exploitation of the project results and the definition of the steps to upscale the design of the V-ACCESS system, paving the ground for a full-scale demonstrator to be developed after the end of this project and bringing the proposed technologies closer to market.
The ambitious target calls for intensive research in the years to come by the industrial partners Fincantieri, VARD Electro, Vard Design, Skeleton Technologies, ASG Superconductors, RINA Germany, RINA Hellas, and the research institutes and universities RSE, SINTEF Energy, SINTEF Ocean, University of Trieste, University of Genova, Politecnico of Milano and University of Birmingham.
