Main issues with the design of batteries to power full electric water busses

This paper presents an analysis of the main issues related to the design of battery pack supplying full electric vessels, such as water busses. After an assessment of the energy storage systems technologies available to power marine applications, battery design aspects are investigated. Hence, a probabilistic battery design method is discussed, taking properly into account the battery lifetime and the inherent economical evaluation. The method is based upon accelerated life tests and allows to face with the randomness of the power load in a suitable way. The optimal size of the battery is determined by tailoring an optimization procedure which ensures the desired robustness against the stochastic load parameters. In the last part of the paper, this probabilistic methodology is applied to a case study represented by a water bus for the public transportation service in the canals of the Venetian lagoon. The numerical results allow to confirm the feasibility and the goodness of the probabilistic approach. © 2016 AEIT.