Seaport Infrastructures

Transport technologies

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main energy structures within port activities, focusing mainly on new technologies undergoing experimentation and/or testing. Inserted in a regulatory framework that promotes the increasing development of renewable energies, the port reality must adapt to changes in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the important environmental impact that more or less large ships exert on the planet. However, the replacement of elements or entire infrastructures may be impractical if the use of green energies is not economically incentivized, or at least regulated at national and international level. The study analyzed the necessary evolution and remodeling of the electrical infrastructures of the port areas that, as an interface of maritime transport, integrated into the territory, require their reorganization into a microgrid, i.e. as a coordinated electro-energy system, suitable and adequate also for shore-to-ship power supply of ships. Ports are now primary industrial-commercial areas, and the needs and energy consumption of port activities have increased over time, with overall values of tens of megawatts. In recent years, the European Union has actively promoted the liberalization of the electricity market in member countries and has activated political campaigns in favor of energy efficiency and renewable energy. These energy strategies, when applied to port infrastructures, make it possible to manage the considerable quantities of energy generated and consumed within the port network. The current electrical distribution, in all realities even non-port ones, is still inadequate to meet the new requirements of eco-compatibility, since many regulatory constraints actually prevent the innovation necessary to achieve the new environmental and energy objectives. There can be no innovation without change. The real implementation of energy innovations (off-shore wind, photovoltaic panels, cogeneration and trigeneration, energy storage, etc..) must be accompanied by a parallel adjustment and a natural evolution of the electrical system, with an opening to new scenarios of organization of users in areas of absorption and appropriate microsystems. The development of the electricity system in the last decade has clearly been oriented towards some fundamental paradigms matured from the development of ICT, the environmentalist drive and the logic of the liberalization processes of the electricity market. Among these paradigms, those of the Smart Grid (SG and Microgrid - MG) certainly appear revolutionary, as far as the evolution of the entire electrical system is concerned, from both a technological and organizational point of view. The main technologies that are analyzed here are: • Cold Ironing, i.e. the electrification of docks • Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) • Hydrogen • Ammonia • Battery systems Each of these technologies has advantages and disadvantages and is more or less used depending on the applications and (as in the case of electric motors) on the length of the route to be covered. Finally, new energy resources are discussed that exploit the seas and oceans, especially waves, to produce mechanical and electrical energy: • Oscillating Water Column • Overtopping devices • Oscillating bodies

22-08-2022

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