Performance evaluation of an all-electric waterbus supplied by hybrid energy storage systems

The adoption of electric propulsion for waterbuses can contribute to reduce negative environmental impact caused by noxious emissions in urban areas. Recent enhancements of batteries technology, with high energy density and efficiency, allow the design of full electric and zero emission vessels. The high variability of power demand that characterizes urban routes, with frequent stop and goes, suggests hybrid storage systems (HESS), based on supercapacitors, as on-board power source, with the main advantage of reducing current peaks for batteries and extending their lifecycle. In this paper, an exponential weight moving average model-based energy management strategy is proposed and evaluated for the case study of a waterbus, operating in the Venetian lagoon. That strategy has shown promising performance on public waterway driving profiles, based on real data acquired during the daily service.