Full Electric
This page is all about electric energy storage (EES), battery development and innovation, hybrid and electric sailing. Scroll down to comment or contact experts directly.
Key lessons
How much do marine battery systems costs? Find rules of thumb to create your own business case here.
Which technical specifications and standards apply when using marine battery technology? Download technical specs. and feasibility studies here.
Stories on batteries and electrification
Renewable Energy Units - Hernieuwbare Brandstof Eenheden - are a Dutch system of certificates based on the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED). Under the system, parties that produce liquid fossil fuels for transport have an obligation from the government to purchase REUs. Per year, €1 billion REUs are traded in the Netherlands. You can earn between 4.5 and 18 eurocents per kWh ‘sold’ to a vessel, for example when using shore power.
The N997 has two propulsion motors with a capacity of 900 [kW] each and a total battery capacity of 50 [MWh] - best estimate currently available. The 120 meter long ship has a fully electric drive, can carry up to 700 TEU and is able to swap battery packs en route. The vessel is designed for Chinese inland and coastal waters, covering over 600 nautical miles of routes on the Yangtze River.
Maersk’s Stillstrom and North Star have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to accelerate the adoption of offshore charging and vessel electrification technologies for Offshore Support Vessels (OSVs) in the offshore wind sector. Offshore charging hubs will enable the vessels to recharge their battery systems using wind energy while in the field.
The Corvus BOB (Battery On Board) is a standardized, class-approved, modular battery room solution available in 10-foot and 20-foot ISO high-cube container sizes. The complete system comes with battery, monitoring system, HVAC , TR exhaust, plus firefighting and detection system. The plug and play battery room simplifies integration into any system integrator’s power management system on board a ship. The battery cells have passive thermal runaway protection, and are type-approved according to DNV.
During the lunch and learn, current forum Director Syb ten Cate Hoedemaker will exchange knowledge and experience from the usage of batteries within the shipping and offshore industries. You will learn which batteries will suit your vessel, plus discover the costs and payback for different operational modes. Which battery suits your vessel, your needs, your operational profile? This is the key question discussed in this lunch and learn with Maritime Battery Forum.
This is a case study on how to decarbonize a tug by making it full electric. It is an homage to Damen’s electric tug ‘Sparky’. In practice, fully electrifying a vessel means to install a - very large - battery pack, in this case at least 3 MWh. This would also be the largest cost component, outweighing switchboard modifications, inverter and other electrical equipment. Cost reductions in OPEX/dayrate are high, between 50% to 90% in extreme cases.
Damen’s first all-electric harbour tug, the RSD-E Tug 2513, is a high-powered tug with 70-tonnes bollard pull, capable of manoeuvring even the largest vessels. It can undertake two or more assignments before being recharged, which takes just two hours. The battery pack size is 2,800 kWh, resulting an approximately 1,400 kW of charging power required. The battery pack is design for the vessel’s 30 year lifetime.
Dubbed ‘the Tesla of the seas’ this fully-electrified, fully-autonomous cargo ship is already making waves. The Yara Birkeland has a 7MWh battery, charged by Norwegian hydro power. She can carry a little over 100 containers. The ship cost about 25 million dollars, about three times a “conventional ship price”, but will nonetheless cut OPEX for Yara by 90%.
The Alfa Lift, a new build heavy lift crane vessel owned by Offshore Heavy Transport, is on track to enter service by early 2022. The vessel features a 3,000 ton main crane, 10,000+ m² smart deck which can be fully submerged to a depth of 15 meters and a electric-hybrid battery system made by Kongsberg.
In 2020, Wärtsilä was awared a combined contract by Therma Marine Inc. (TMI) for a barge-mounted 54 MW / 32 MWh energy storage system. The power barge consists of ten Wärtsilä GridSolv Max systems, supported by the the GEMS energy management platform. Total costs of this power barge are estimated at €16M for the battery packs plus €8.1M for the power equipment excluding engineering and installation.
What are solid-state batteries? Where can I buy solid-state batteries for my vessel?