Dr Alexander Micallef (Senior Lecturer with the Department of Industrial Electrical Power Conversion) delivered a keynote speech at the , held in Malta from 7 to 9 November 2022. His keynote presentation was entitled: “Maritime Microgrids: Electrification of our waters,” wherein Dr Micallef presented an overview of the electrification activities occurring in the maritime sector depicted as Maritime Microgrids.
Dr Micallef gave a brief overview of hierarchical microgrid architectures and how these electricity networks relate with the maritime sector. He proceeded to define the state of the art in shipboard power system architectures, and the present trends in maritime vessel electrification. He then also described how ports can support the ongoing decarbonisation efforts as centres for sector coupling and energy system integration.
Parts of the presented work are related to two ongoing projects in which Dr Micallef is the principal investigator; RIVIERA (Funded by the UM Research Seed Fund 2021 + Research Excellence Fund 2022-2023) and ATLANTES (Funded through the project “Setting up of transdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange (TRAKE) complex at the University of Malta (ERDF.01.124)” which is being co-financed through the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund 2014 – 2020).
The scientific programme also featured five other keynotes by top international experts, including Prof. Nikos Hatziargyriou (National Technical University of Athens, Greece), Prof. Eleonora Riva Sanseverino (University of Palermo, Sicily, Italy), and Dr. Ivan Matejak (European Energy Research Alliance), amongst others. The conference was well attended by 200+ delegates and 100+ scientific paper presentations.
