Onshore Power Supply

The shipping industry aims to become greener, partly driven by governmental regulations. One of the possibilities to reduce emissions like CO2, NOx and SOx is the use of onshore power supply (OPS).

During the seminar ‘Generator power versus onshore power supply in the shipping industry’, organised by Platform Clean Shipping , global developments, positive effects on air quality and technical possibilities in the field of OPS were discussed.

Eelco den Boer of CE Delft started by explaining what OPS is: “It is a technology to reduce local emissions to zero. OPS is always custom-made, and it is too expensive to implement on a big scale.”

About 30 ports worldwide offer OPS of which 14 in Europe and nine in the United States of America and Canada, and Asia is currently making a leap forward, about 300 vessels have OPS connection possibilities, among the several cruise vessels of the Holland America Line.

Sibrand Hassing of Holland America Group commented: “Our goal is to reduce our energy demand by two per cent every year. We advocate OPS, six of our vessels are equipped with OPS connections and are used in Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles, amongst others. In general we are content, but we do have some issues, like problems with different voltages in the onshore network and insufficient infrastructure in some ports. Therefore we suggest to equip OPS installations with an automatic voltage tap changer and reckon with higher demands, at least 15 MW per connection.”

Challenging

According to Henri van der Weide of the Port of Amsterdam, the nice thing about OPS, and at the same time the challenge of it, is the fact that two parties are involved, the ship and the shore facility. And it is exactly that which causes the chicken-and-egg-problem: it is expensive and therefore for a port to invest in it, it is necessary to have enough vessels with OPS connections to have a viable business case, but ship owners will only invest in such a connection when there are enough ports offering OPS.

During the seminar, several barriers were identified. Next to the high investment costs, the difference in frequencies, which requires an expensive frequency converter, as well as the tax on energy, but not on fuel cause problems. Denmark has successfully asked the European Commission for exemption as the Commission considers OPS an innovative technology. Chris Kampfraath of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment commented that there was contact with the Finnish government regarding this issue and that it has the Dutch government’s attention again.

Reducing emissions

Ecofys conducted research regarding OPS for the European Commission. Rob Winkel of Ecofys summarised the results: “There is a potential for OPS in Europe and the Netherlands, our research shows that OPS reduces the emissions of CO2 by twelve per cent, which will become 17 per cent by 2020 due to more sustainable energy generation, SOx by 80 per cent and NOx and PM by almost 100 per cent. Moreover noise is reduced as the generators are turned off. The biggest potential for OPS in Europe is the cruise industry, as cruise vessels use a lot of energy when mooring, about 1,334 GWh per year.”

The recommendations resulting from the research are to start with cruise vessels and ferries, as the biggest profit is to obtain there, as they use a lot of electricity and moor mostly at the same place, and to work together, prevent competition and share knowledge.

The efforts of Dutch ports

In the Netherlands, the Port of Rotterdam
already has some experience with OPS,
told Maurits Prinssen: “We offer OPS on all public berths for inland shipping, Port of Rotterdam pays for tax difference and we assume that there will be a tax exemption in the future. For seagoing vessels, we offer incentives through the Environmental Ship Index, a vessel with suitable OPS connection receives an extra bonus. We also invested in preparatory infrastructure on the quays of the container terminals at Maasvlakte II.”

He continued: “Different researches were conducted regarding OPS, one of them regarding OPS for the Rotterdam cruise terminal. This research was based on 20 to 30 vessels per year and it turned out to not be economically viable and improvement of air quality was hardly noticeable. Next to that, few cruise vessels are equipped with an OPS connection. Today it has our attention again, as the amount of cruise calls significantly grew and is expected to grow even more in the future. Stena Line has the only OPS system for seagoing vessels in Rotterdam to date, aimed at improving the air quality and reducing the noise nuisance and officially taken into operation in 2012.”

Not only the Port of Rotterdam has researched the possibilities of OPS, the Port of Amsterdam did as well, told Ton van Bremen: “The conclusion of our feasibility study regarding OPS was that it is feasible for river cruisers, but not feasible for cargo vessels. For seagoing cruise vessels it is only feasible when enough cruise vessels are equipped with an OPS connection and the support of ship owners is therefore necessary.”

And that again brings us back to the chicken and the egg. OPS is a sustainable possibility for certain types of vessels, but to create an economically viable business case remains difficult. However, the Dutch maritime industry will continue to look into a variety of solutions to continue to make the industry more sustainable.

Gail van den Hanenberg