PLUG: Power Generation During Loading and Unloading

The production and trade in electric energy have been liberalized while the transmission and distribution are maintained as a monopoly. According to the Energy Law, the electricity sales and the electricity transport of integrated utilities must be completely unbundled with separate accounting for production, trading and transmission. The electricity market (NordPool) is a so-called “day-ahead”, when the electricity spot prices with one hour resolution are known one day beforehand.

The growing price volatility and scarce generation capacity are probably the most known features of deregulated electricity markets. The figure below shows variation of the system price for 2007. The registered difference between the lowest (8,8 Euro/MWh) and the highest (49,67 Euro/MWh) price during the given period was more than 5 times.

 An efficient participation of a vessel or a group of them in the spot market environment requires a frequent decision making and regular developing of generation schedules based on day-ahead electricity spot prices. The Demonstrator therefore is primarily intended to be used as decision-support tool on a local level and can be adapted to technical characteristics of a particular vessel in a particular port of call.

The Demonstrator is not meant to be a bidding tool nor a portfolio-optimisation tool, since these activities are normally performed by Electricity Traders. The Demonstrator is a software tool, which was developed at SINTEF Energy Research using Microsoft Visual Basic.