Optimal exchangeable battery distribution and docking station location for electric sailing in IWW shipping

Abstract

With the increasing need for more sustainable transportation, the electrification of IWW shipping becomes of great relevance. There are several ways to achieve this, from which the implementation of an exchangeable battery system is discussed in this research. Several challenges arise from the large-scale implementation of such a system. One of which is the optimal distribution of the batteries and the location of the docking stations to guarantee electric sailing for a certain demand of vessels. By developing a time-discrete mixed-integer linear programming optimisation model the outputs of this research aim at assessing this. The obtained results showed the optimisation opportunities and possible synergies that can be achieved when vessels share the batteries and charging infrastructure. Though, it is not trivial to determine beforehand the optimal result for different inputs, through different scenario analysis, information that can be useful to assist the strategic decision of the system implementation from a logistic perspective can be obtained.