Abstract
Platform Supply Vessels (PSVs), which provide essential logistical support to offshore oil and gas installations, are a significant source of CO2 emissions. The emergence of hybrid-electric propulsion technologies, combined with offshore charging infrastructure, offers new opportunities to mitigate these emissions. This paper studies the Hybrid-Electric Platform Supply Vessel Routing Problem with Speed Optimization (HEPSVRP-SO). It considers routing, sailing speed, charging, and power management decisions for a fleet of PSVs with the objective of minimizing operational costs while meeting given emission reduction targets. We formulate the problem as a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model, which is computationally tractable for a commercial MIP solver only for small-scale instances. To address larger instances, we develop a three-stage Path-Flow-Based (PFB) heuristic that (i) generates a set of promising candidate routes, (ii) optimizes sailing speeds and charging decisions along each individual candidate route, and (iii) assigns routes to vessels by solving a path-flow model. Computational experiments using real-world data from the Norwegian continental shelf confirm the heuristic’s effectiveness. The results further indicate that significant emission reductions can be attained at moderate additional cost, and that optimizing sailing speeds is crucial for minimizing these costs.