Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy Suppression strategy of short-term and long-term environmental disturbances for maritime photovoltaic system Ruoli Tang a, ⁎ , Qiao Lin a , Jinxiang Zhou a , Shangyu Zhang a , Jingang Lai b , Xin Li a , Zhengcheng Dong c a School of Energy and Power Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China b E.ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany c School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China HIGHLIGHTS • Optimal configuration of large-scale photovoltaic array on green-ship. • Effect of shadow-distribution can be ignored in the proposed configuration. • Methodology for suppressing short-term environmental disturbance. • Operational-data selective-reutilization for suppressing long-term disturbance. • Optimal length of time-window is verified through case studies. ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Maritime photovoltaic system Green ship Maximum power point tracking Environmental disturbance ABSTRACT The maritime photovoltaic system is easily affected by the special environmental disturbances from the ship and the sea, e.g., the partial and dynamic shadings when moved with a ship, the corrosion of photovoltaic module when continuously worked in high salinity oceanic environment. In this study, the optimal configuration of photovoltaic array installed on large ocean-going ship is developed, and a novel offline/online hybrid maximum power point tracking method is presented to suppress the short-term disturbance caused by the partial and dynamic shadings. Then, in order to dynamically track the corrosion of photovoltaic module and suppress the long-term disturbance, the dynamic knowledge-base with time-window is developed. Finally, the proposed methodology is verified by simulation experiments. Experimental results show that in the proposed configura- tion, location of the maximum power point is closely related to the area and degree of the shading, but is irrelevant to the distribution. Moreover, according to the experimental results, the operation data in the nearest 3 months to 1 year can be collected and employed to train the offline model, in order to obtain the best control performance. With the proposed configuration and control methodology, the environmental disturbances can be efficiently suppressed, the evaluated system can also obtain efficient and robust control performance under complex maritime environment. 1. Introduction In the maritime transportation, many green-energy techniques are widely developed and applied to the ocean-going ships in recent years, in order to obtain promising performance in energy-saving and emis- sion-reduction [1]. For example, the so-called green ship is widely equipped with large-scale photovoltaic (PV) system, to generate electric power and make full use of the abundant solar energy in the ocean [2]. The first commercial boat with solar/wind hybrid energy system is called the Solar Sailor, which was designed and manufactured in Aus- tralia [3]. The first boat to travel around the world on sunlight alone, called the PlanetSolar, is installed with 38,000 PV cells, 11 metric tons of lithium ion batteries, and 120-lkilowatt propulsion motors. In 2010, PlanetSolar departed Monaco and began its 19-month trip [4]. In 2008, a total of 328 large solar panels capable of producing 40 kW, as well as electrical generating equipment, were installed on the Auriga Leader ship in Japan [5]. In 2012, a solar energy system with 768 panels (about 160 kW) and a lithium-ion battery pack (about 2.2 MWh) was https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114183 Received 3 August 2019; Received in revised form 28 October 2019; Accepted 14 November 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ruolitang@hotmail.com (R. Tang). Applied Energy xxx (xxxx) xxxx 0306-2619/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Ruoli Tang, et al., Applied Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114183