Abstract
The aquaculture industry is one of Norway's most important export sectors, and it relies on specialized service vessels to perform maintenance and repairs at offshore production facilities. To overcome environmental challenges, there is a need for a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the industry, including those from the fleet of service vessels. This reduction could incur significant costs, making it crucial for the industry to find cost-efficient ways to reduce emissions.
This research introduces the Hybrid Electric Aquaculture Service Vessel Routing Problem (HEAVRP), which consists of routing a heterogeneous fleet of hybrid electric service vessels between fish farms to perform service tasks. These vessels can operate on both conventional diesel and electricity from installed battery packs. Charging stations allow vessels to recharge their battery packs with green power, while the conventional machinery provides flexibility in sailing range. The HEAVRP involves determining the routing of the fleet between service tasks, as well as a charging and power management plan (balancing diesel and electricity use) to minimize variable costs of performing service tasks, including penalty costs for unperformed tasks.
An arc flow model formulation is proposed, and a computational study is conducted based on realistic data. In addition to a realistic current fleet of hybrid electric vessels, different potential future fleets with larger battery packs are considered.