Refitting a Cruise Ship with More Electric Power & Energy Systems: A Methodology to Evaluate the Impact on Fuel Efficiency

In today's tourism landscape, cruise ships play a crucial role in the recreational maritime transport market. However, the sector is facing a crucial challenge in finding novel solutions to limit their environmental impact. While new ships can be easily designed and built considering modern environmentally friendly solutions, there still remain a huge number of vessels that are still far from the end of their useful life, which may benefit from modern technologies' introduction during mid-life refitting operations. However, spending effort on refitting a ship to improve its fuel efficiency may be futile if the resulting impact is not capable of repaying itself in terms of reduced operating costs. In this context, cruise ships are endowed with a full-electric architecture, which eases electrification and introduction of energy storage systems. Thus, in this paper, a methodology is proposed to evaluate the impact on fuel efficiency of refitting a cruise ship with more electric power & energy systems. A case study is proposed, taking an old-fashioned cruise ship, and introducing energy storage systems and frequency converters for chillers' high power induction motors. The results provide useful insights on the opportunity of applying such modern technologies to ships that have not been designed taking them into account.