In Pakistan, the performance of conventional electrical grids is inefficient, resulting in severe energy crises. To overcome the alarming challenges persisting in the energy grids, Pakistan must focus on system protection, grid reliability, distribution and transmission, and power quality. The inefficiencies in grid protection and management signify an overall problematic energy scenario. The solutions to these problems include the improvement of domestic, commercial, and industrial demand-side management and the reduction in distribution network losses. A smart grid (SG) is a critical requirement as it can overcome the shortcomings of the existing grid owing to its promising features, enhanced consumer empowerment, utmost security; efficient and optimized energy flow; and demand-supply management. Thus, the SG is essential to overcome the energy crisis in Pakistan and achieve the standards of other developed nations in the energy sector. This study aims to highlight the significant prospects of SGs within Pakistan with the key objectives of its availability requirements. We compare the energy scenario in Pakistan with that of other countries and recommend various aspects that require improvement through SG implementation. Additionally, we discuss the incorporation of renewable energy resources and present a market analysis regarding SGs to illustrate the SG scenario and its implementation in Pakistan. Moreover, we analyze and evaluate detailed taxonomies of energy generation, energy projects, renewable energy assessment, power market trends in Pakistan, and the basic requirements of SGs. Furthermore, a critical analysis of the energy sector in Pakistan is elaborated, which describes the possibilities, requirements, and strengths pertaining to the transformation of the modern electric grid with respect to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. Thus, we believe that our work is more versatile in improving the energy system of Pakistan for the implementation of the SG.

The main objective of this paper is to select the optimal configuration of a ship’s power system, considering the use of fuel cells and batteries, that would achieve the lowest CO₂ emissions also taking into consideration the number of battery cycles. The ship analyzed in this work is a Platform Supply Vessel (PSV) used to support oil and gas offshore platforms transporting goods, equipment, and personnel. The proposed scheme considers the ship’s retrofitting. The ship’s original main generators are maintained, and the fuel cell and batteries are installed as complementary sources. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is pursued on the ship’s demand curve. The simulations used to calculate the CO₂ emissions for each of the new hybrid configurations were developed using HOMER software. The proposed solutions are auxiliary generators, three types of batteries, and a proton-exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) with different sizes of hydrogen tanks. The PEMFC and batteries were sized as containerized solutions, and the sizing of the auxiliary engines was based on previous works. Each configuration consists of a combination of these solutions. The selection of the best configuration is one contribution of this paper. The new configurations are classified according to the reduction of CO₂ emitted in comparison to the original system. For different demand levels, the results indicate that the configuration classification may vary. Another valuable contribution of this work is the sizing of the battery and hydrogen storage systems. They were installed in 20 ft containers, since the installation of batteries, fuel cells and hydrogen tanks in containers is widely used for ship retrofit. As a result, the most significant reduction of CO₂ emissions is 10.69%. This is achieved when the configuration includes main generators, auxiliary generators, a 3,119 kW lithium nickel manganese cobalt (LNMC) battery, a 250 kW PEMFC, and 581 kg of stored hydrogen.

A incorporação de Energias Renováveis (ER) no sistema de energia convencional de uma plataforma de Petróleo e Gás (P&G) pode resultar em uma redução significativa nos custos operacionais e nas emissões....

Many researchers and operators are assessing the impact of wind energy integration into the gas turbines based conventional power system due to the intermittent and variable nature. The flexibility characteristics of the gas turbines are vital to guarantee adequate performance at different levels of wind energy penetration to meet the demand of the O&G platform. This study aims to verify the impact of increasing flexibility of the offshore O&G platform’s power system. Therefore, the conventional O&G platform power system is modelled and compared with the post-flexibilization or state-of-the-art power system at different dynamic restrictions of the Open-Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGT) like ramp rates, minimum loading, uptime and downtime, and start-up/shut-down costs. Subsequently, the conventional and state-of-the-art power system model are then simulated at different levels of wind energy penetration, to analyze the system response of the O&G platform, as the intermittent wind energy can generate critical power system instability and imbalance. The proposed model has 4 OCGTs of 33.3MW (locally installed at the O&G platform) and 4 offshore floating wind turbines of 15MW that is satisfying 2 different load profiles of O&G platform (68MW and 34MW average load). The simulation results highlighted that the state-of-the-art power system accommodated higher shares of wind energy as compared to the conventional power system due to the flexible constraints. Also, the flexible power system achieved higher levels of fuel saving, when simulated for 100 hours. The same case study was considered for 25 years and the hours of fuel saving at 5% was 1733 hours and 20% of wind penetration resulted in 1857 hours of fuel saving. The study was performed in the modified Python for Power System Analysis (PyPSA), a python based free simulation toolbox for optimizing the power dispatch.