Decarbonization is important for reducing environmental impact and
improving sustainability across all commercial enterprizes including
hard to decarbonize sectors such as marine. A hybrid seagoing marine
vehicle model was created and used to investigate the fuel savings
potential of hybrid electric powertrains for commercial fishing boats in
Alaska and the sensitivity of those potential fuel savings to component
sizing and specific fishery participation. Data collected from the
subject conventional diesel-powered boat were used to create and
validate a flexible physics-based energy model of the conventional
powertrain, which served as the foundation of an adaptable hybrid
electric energy model. A linear programming formulation was developed
for energy management in the hybrid model and used to optimize fuel
savings from the hybrid system. To generalize the results to a broader
population of commercial fishing boats, A Markov random walk method was
used to generate duty cycles of entire fishing seasons for boats working
in various fisheries over the course of a year. A simple payback
analysis considers which powertrain options are financially viable for
each year-long duty cycle. Simulation results show that an aggressive
hybrid powertrain could result in up to 3 days of full electric
operation while a mild hybrid would result in a 50% fuel savings on the
same 3-day mission. Missions out to 12 days still resulted in 12-19%
savings for those same hybrid powertrains, but the at-sea recharging
and longer transits inherent in longer voyages reduced the maximum
savings compared to shorter missions that include recharging batteries
at dock.