Solar Powered Boat Design Optimization

This paper presents a methodology to design a solar power boat with the aim to determine the size of photovoltaic (PV) system with minimum cost. Two stages optimization procedures have been proposed. First stage is a simplified ship size optimization based on the existing ship design for obtaining minimum propulsion power by using Golden search section algorithm. Second stage is optimization of PV system size for obtaining the number of photovoltaic (PV) module and battery with minimum cost by using Simplex algorithm. A leisure passenger catamaran boat operated in Taiwan with 42 person capacity is chosen as a case study. The service speed of the boat is 5 knots with total duration of cruising around 5 hours. 280 watt Multi-crystalline PV module and 12 volt 90 Ah Lead-Acid Battery is chosen for this case. From the simulation, it is obtained that the optimal ship has 32 PV modules (8.96 kW), 32 batteries (34.56 kWh), 14.44 meter length of water line, 4.37 meter breadth, 0.852 meter draught, and 16.258 ton of total displacement with the PV system annual capital cost around USD3,557.