Today, the maritime industry is facing an increasing challenge in terms of emission reduction and energy consumption optimization. Ship hybrid microgrids, comprising fuel cell and distributed generation sources, are illustrating optimistic solutions. This paper analyzes a challenging operation of a ship hybrid microgrid comprising ammonia fuel cell and photovoltaic arrays considering the absence of energy storage. The absence of energy storage system is due to marine safety concerns, constant power management and system stability when dealing fluctuations in ship load profile and initial transition of photovoltaic cell arrays.
To overcome this challenge, power optimization management based on model predictive control with rolling horizon is applied. The core of this configuration is a non-linear problem with number of constraints which is solved through a corporative algorithm comprising particle swarm optimization and sequential quadratic programming which can increase system efficiency up to 22%. The model predictive control harmonizes the dynamics of electrochemical in ammonia fuel cell, non-linear transition of photovoltaic arrays under variant climatic situations and ship load profiles that can decrease ammonia consumption (17.3%), improve voltage profile (61%) and network stability.