Electric ships. It sounds like something out of science fiction but it's fast becoming non-fiction. The MV Ampere ferry (above) was built in 2014, the winner of a government competition to design an environmentally friendly ferry service across the fjord. A diesel alternative would use 1 million litres of fuel each year and emit 570 tonnes of CO2. It's a no-brainer, isn't it? For Norway, it is. 80 of their 200 ferries are all electric. The secret to their success is:
short journey
relatively small bulk
frequent recharging options
Many naval experts at the time of MV Ampere's launch expressed serious doubts that anything larger than a small ferry could possibly be electrified. The battery weight alone to propel such a ship would compromise the ship's range, speed and cargo tonnage. As if to prove them wrong, the Norwegian naval engineers came up with the MV Yara Birkeland, an 80-meter long, fully electric cargo ship capable of carrying 120 containers.
Title photo: MV Ampere is the world's first battery electric car ferry, operating between Lavik and Oppedal in Norway. It is owned and operated by Norled, and crosses the Sognefjord, the longest and deepest fjord in Norway.
Figure 1
Yara Birkeland sails between Herøya and Brevik, a distance of 13 km carrying chemicals and fertiliser, and is intended to reduce road truck traffic by 40,000 loads per year. The carbon emissions saving is huge. The ship has a maximum speed of 15 knots and a battery capacity of 6.8 MWh. This allows for extended operation between recharging. The vessel is designed to recharge at dedicated onshore charging stations while unloading and loading cargo. The recharge time can fluctuate based on the power supply available at the charging station and the ship's current battery level but times of around 2 hours are sufficient to keep the ship in operation. 98% of Norway's electricity comes from renewable sources making the Yara Birkeland the 'greenest' cargo vessel in service.
Or is it? Because once again, the Chinese have muscled in on the electrification scene with the truely enormous COSCO Green Water 01 electric ship (Fig.2). Enormous for an electric ship (it can carry 700 20-foot containers) but still small compared to the largest diesel container ships (which can carry over 10,000). Nonetheless, what the Chinese have demonstrated is that electrification of commercial shipping is possible and with continued improvements in energy-density battery power, we should see a significant proportion of commercial shipping going electric by 2050.
The Green Water measures 119.8 meters in length and weighs in at 10,000 tonnes. Perhaps most impressive is her battery capacity - 50+MWh. That's more than seven times the Norwegian Yara Birkeland. Why 50+? Because additional battery modules can be loaded on board for extra range. That means the Green Water can complete trips that consume a whopping 80,000 kWh, equivalent to approximately 15 tonnes of conventional fuel. As a result, the ship can save 3,900 kg of fuel for every 100 nautical miles traveled, cutting 12.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
If - and it's a very big if - the charging of these huge battery modules uses electricity from renewable energy sources then these are seriously impressive figures. However, it doesn't come cheap with the batteries alone coming in at around £20 million (€25 million). For the immediate future, electrification of smaller, short range vessels is a must with ferries being an obvious target.
Figure 2 - The COSCO Green Water 01
Title photo by Wikimalte - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,