Hybrid Green Vessel Design

This paper presents the milestones of a Hybrid Green Vessel Design capstone project. The motivation of this project is to develop knowledge and skills in green energy applications, hybrid vessels, and power management systems. To accomplish this, undergraduate students are researching and designing a hybrid power plant for a green vessel that utilizes a variable electric trolling motor. The team of four undergraduates working on this project include three Electrical Engineering students and one Mechanical Engineering student. The project objective is to learn about hybrid green vessel design and operation. The design process includes: 1) Literature review of hydrogen fuel cells and its applications in the maritime domain. 2) Designing a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell and battery power system. 3) Modeling the power system in computer simulation to test and verify the design. 4) Implementing the design to physically build a 100W fuel cell system to validate the simulation.