An Energy Management Strategy for an Inland Smart Port with Optimal Ferries Allocation

This work proposes an optimal energy management strategy for a smart inland port, designed to serve as the main hub for an inland electric ferry traffic system. The smart port architecture integrates renewable energy resources, a battery energy storage system, and two shore connection infrastructures for charging the electric ferries during daily operations. The optimization addresses the power dispatch of the hub resources, and the charging profile of each ferry through the optimal allocation of the shore charging infrastructures. A state-transition matrix models the routing of each ferry. Each state represents the position of the ferry in time, while transitions represent navigation between ports, accounting for travel time. The algorithm incorporates the fixed scheduling provided by the navigation authority, based on the actual needs of the population served by the ferry service. The results demonstrate that the proposed energy management strategy effectively provides a feasible resource allocation program while meeting the required ferry schedule.