To reduce pollution from ships in coastal and international navigation, shipping companies are turning to various technological solutions, mostly based on electrification and the use of alternative fuels with a lower carbon footprint. One of the alternatives to traditional diesel fuel is the use of hydrogen as a fuel or hydrogen fuel cells as a power source. Their application on ships is still in the experimental phase and is limited to smaller ships, which serve as a kind of platform for evaluating the applicability of different technological solutions. However, the use of hydrogen on a large scale as a primary energy source on coastal and ocean-going vessels also requires an infrastructure for the production and safe storage of hydrogen. This paper provides an overview of color-based hydrogen classification as one of the main methods for describing hydrogen types based on currently available production technologies, as well as the principles and safety aspects of hydrogen storage. The advantages and disadvantages of the production technologies with respect to their application in the maritime sector are discussed. Problems and obstacles that must be overcome for the successful use of hydrogen as a fuel on ships are also identified. The issues presented can be used to determine long-term indicators of the global warming potential of using hydrogen as a fuel in the shipping industry and to select an appropriate cost-effective and environmentally sustainable production and storage method in light of the technological capabilities and resources of a particular area.

This article is structured to present an overview of a DC ship power system. The main DC grid configurations will be presented and a difference to the AC system configuration will be highlighted. Compared to the AC power system used on board ships, DC has some obvious benefits which will be explored in this paper. These benefits include: improvement of prime mover efficiency and reduction of fuel costs, weight and space savings, unity power factor operation of generators, lower transmission losses, faster and simpler parallel connection of generators and simpler implementation of energy storage. Finally, some of the challenges introduced with the DC technology will also be explored. These include: high short-circuit currents, DC protection concept and expensive and possibly non-profitable energy storage system solutions.

The maritime industry plays a key role in the global supply chain. Advanced digital technologies bring significant economic benefits to ports and shipowners, but at the same time increase the risks of cyber threats and attacks. This article aims to provide guidelines and examples of good practice that will help in the effective implementation of cyber risk assessment, cyber resilience and cyber sustainability, which are the products of increasingly pronounced challenges. The interconnection of ports requires operators to achieve and maintain a baseline level of cybersecurity to ensure security across the entire port ecosystem. The development of new technologies in areas such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, etc., contributes to the fact that monitoring and control systems in the maritime industry are becoming increasingly exposed to cyber threats and various forms of cyberattacks. The connection of vessels with systems on land in real time presents a necessary element in meeting the intended goals in the digital transformation of the maritime sector. This results in increasingly frequent work on specific software solutions within the maritime sector. With the adoption of new operational technologies (OT) and information technologies (IT), the desire for more efficient supply chains and operations of shipping in general has been realized, but at the same time the level of cybersecurity has decreased. The research results aim to encourage port operators and shippers to develop a series of good practices in order to develop an appropriate level of cybersecurity, resilience, and sustainability.

Various faults in ship’s electrical power system, primarily those connected with diesel-generators, governors and automatic voltage regulators, may lead to oscillations in generator load, voltage and frequency. If those transients are large enough, a partial or total blackout may occur. In order to prevent such events, it is very important to get an insight into dynamic behaviour of electrical energy sources on board vessel. In this paper, a dynamic model in the time domain of marine diesel-generator is presented. The model is realized in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment and consists of three main parts: the synchronous generator model, diesel-engine governor model and voltage regulator model. Simulation of a sudden loss of one generator when two generators are running in parallel is performed. Simulation results show that the presented model is fully applicable for the purpose of analysis of the marine diesel-generator dynamic behaviour during transient periods.

Blackout prevention on dynamically positioned vessels during closed bus bar operation, which allows more efficient and eco-friendly operation of main diesel generators, is the subject of numerous studies. Developed solutions rely mostly on the ability of propulsion frequency converters to limit the power flow from the grid to propulsion motors almost instantly, which reduces available torque until the power system is fully restored after failure. In this paper, a different approach is presented where large scale energy storage is used to take part of the load during the time interval from failure of one of the generators until the synchronization and loading of a stand-by generator. In order to analyze power system behavior during the worst case fault scenario and peak power situations, and to determine the required parameters of the energy storage system, a dynamic simulation model of a ship electrical power system is used. It is concluded that implementation of large scale energy storage can increase the stability and reliability of a vessel’s electrical power system without the need for the reduction of propulsion power during a fault. Based on parameters obtained from simulations, existing energy storage systems were evaluated, and the possibility of their implementation in the maritime transportation sector was considered. Finally, an evaluation model of energy storage implementation cost-effectiveness was presented.