A review on the large-scale shipboard energy storage systems

Energy storage system is an essential equipment in ships, which can supply various kinds of shipboard loads. With the maturity of electric propulsion technology, all-electric ships have become the main trend of future ship design. In this context, the energy storage system will be responsible for multiple types of ship loads, instead of mainly responsible for auxiliary loads in the past, especially acting as a part of the ship’s power system and cooperating with ship’s main/auxiliary engines to improve the economic/environmental characteristics of ships. The change of role accelerates the integration of large-scale energy storage systems into ships, bringing a series of issues such as energy storage system state estimation, energy management, and optimization planning. This paper first classifies the current energy storage technologies, then introduces the structure of typical all-electric ships and points out the application scenarios of energy storage systems, and finally proposes several technical problems that need to be resolved after the large-capacity energy storage systems are connected to ships, namely : Distributed control of ship energy storage system, adaptive planning and optimization of ship energy storage system, and state estimation of ship energy storage system. This research has clarified the future roadmap for large-scale energy storage integration into electrified ships.