A Technoeconomic Model for Maritime Applications of Green Power Technologies

Abstract

Growing societal and regulatory pressures are causing industries around the world to consider greener alternatives to conventional fossil fuel power technologies. As a result, power solution suppliers like CAT are facing strategic uncertainties: if, where, and when their core product markets will be disrupted by the novel adoption of alternative technologies. With the intention of helping to inform CAT’s future product and service strategy in conjunction with previous research related to powering mines and data centers, this thesis outlines the development of a code to estimate and compare the total cost of ownership of battery, hydrogen fuel cell, and nuclear power technologies to incumbent fossil fuel-driven systems in a variety of maritime scenarios including serving shoreside port electricity demand and on-water power demand across a diverse set of vessel segments. The code leverages first principles, empirical models, and researched assumptions to model the performance and costs of power systems in response to stochastically generated and deterministic power demand profiles over the useful lifetimes of the assets. For vessel applications, the code also estimates the volumes and masses of the alternative systems as a basis to judge their practicality. Hypothetical power systems for four archetypal ports and six vessel segments (across a range of power nodes) were studied to identify potential opportunities in and adjacent to the marine markets CAT currently serves. The outcomes of the study align with conventional intuition regarding the application of the technologies considered. Under certain conditions, the results support the technoeconomic case for the implementation of battery technology on short-haul vessels whose operations are predictable and would not be disrupted by shortened refueling/recharging intervals. Similarly, the results show that adoption of small modular nuclear reactors at ports and on large vessels with consistently large baseload power demand can provide economic advantages over incumbent fossil fuel technologies. The results of the simulations are sensitive to several technology-agnostic parameters including discount rates, fuel and electricity prices, demand growth rates, and other macro-economic conditions. In future, with ample case-specific data, the code developed for this thesis may provide convincing justification for the adoption of an alternative technology to serve the power demand of an individual port or vessel.