Cold Ironing - Plugging the Gap in Greener Shipping Industry

Cold Ironing - The practise of providing power to a ship from shore, when she is in port, to enable the ship to shut down the diesel grunting auxiliary generators. 

Cold Ironing - Alternative Shore Power

The benefits are reduced PM and CO2 emissions in port area, thus ensuring a cleaner and greener environment around the harbor.

The technique of providing shore power to ship when in port is rather quite old, of the time of coal fired ships.  The coal fired ships when entered port, would let their coal fire die out and provide power to ship from shore connection. In this way, the Iron engines were available in cold state, before next sailing. From here, came the term cold ironing. Formally speaking, the technique is also named as Alternative Marine Power (AMP) in many European ports. 

Potential emission taxes and fuel saving measures are prompting the port authorities and the ship owners to adopt Cold Ironing method.

Particulate emissions from ship remains a major concern for ports located in heart of population and commerce. Excessive PM emissions from burning low cost marine fuel degrades the air quality of the nearby areas. Also is the factor of the stringent requirement by port authorities to switch over to ultra clean fuels of high cost while in port areas.Though studies suggest that even the use of low sulphur fuel doesn't match the cleanliness of shore power technology.

Cold Ironing

 Cruise ship operators don't want their passenger to breathe the fumes of HFO while in port. Given is the added advantage of reduced noise and vibration giving an added serenity to the high end passengers.

The effectiveness of the system in curbing pollution is much answered if the power supply is from a hydroelectric utility rather than from a thermal power plant. It is well understood that by using a thermal power plant the emission is merely transferred from a port terminal to the thermal station.

The retrofit onboard a ship to recieve the shore terminal for it's entire port power requirement includes a transformer that steps down 6,600-volt shoreside power to the ship specific volt power; room-size enclosures that house the receptacles where shore-power cables are connected to the vessels; and cabling that run from the receptacles through the transformer and into the vessel’s electrical control panel.

Recreational vessel have been using this technology for quite a some time in past but the use of shore power for merchant vessel is a new entrant in shipping industry.

The question is: If recreational vessel have been using this, then why it is new for merchant vessels? 

The answer would be quite a complex one. But broadly speaking it is the economic constraints to set up a system of huge power demand at a promising and viable cost.However, technological advancements and environmental pressure has called upon to review the method.

Cold Ironing Technique

An important point to be considered is the varying demand and supply ratio of power in port depending on the number of ship in the port at any time. Let's say, The amount of power necessary to meet the demands of a single ship is fifteen megawatts (MW). If the port can accommodate four ships the capacity needs to be at least sixty MW. But because the port will not have four ships in port at some times only a portion of the needed capacity is used. Regardless of use the port still must incur the expense of a sixty megawatt transformer substation on site and the feeder line from the utility.

Another difficulty encountered is that there are different voltage and frequency specifications for vessels built and operated in different parts of the world. Most ships operate on low voltage of 440V power, while large container and cruise ships operate on higher voltages of 6.6 to 11KV, and frequency requirements can vary from 50 or 60Hz.  One approach to solve this has been to use portable current convertor devices at dockside, called Dual Frequency Multi Voltage, which can overcome the compatibility problem. Perhaps, as the technology matures and becomes more prevalent, standardization of power specifications will occur.

Ships could expect a payback time of three years and ports four years if they invested in the technology.

In spite of many technological as well as economic constraint shore power has been taken up by many North American ports including Seattle, Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, and Halifax. 

However, U.S. is not the only nation to voice dissent over the value of shore power.European countries too have commissioned the project for cold ironing technique for some of their ports. The British Society of Maritime Industries hosted a seminar that discussed the viability of shore power.

A note for use of renewable energy for shore power can not be left with.Though, the economic constraints of cold ironing puts a question mark on use of it, we are actually left with fewer options to adopt. The use of solar photovoltaic cell or windmills demands a huge installaton area, which is hardly available near to ports. Also the use of battery banks of such a capacity, requires a bank of a size of building.

Watch this video for a better insight on Cold Ironing:

Though offshore wind farm installation, would prove to be a major advantage for ports setting up plans of using costly utility power for cold ironing. Offshore windfarm installation would grant freedom to ports in terms of power tariff, and would also prove as an even greener initiative. To read more about Offshore Windfarm, read this earlier post : Offshore Windfarms

Left with any queries, drop in your questions in comment section. 

Related articles : Offshore Windfarms

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