The Port of Gothenburg case
History and current status
Port of Gothenburg is owned by the municipality of Gothenburg.
Port of Gothenburg has been one of the Swedish pioneer ports in terms of OPS, having had the first installation since the 1990s for low voltage connections. In 2000, a high voltage station was implemented at the request of and in cooperation with cargo owner Stora Enso for ro-ro vessels. This first high voltage implementation incited a growing interest for OPS at the port of Gothenburg. Stena Line installed and connected their vessels to an OPS installation as well during 2006-2010. In 2010, the port also got a new environmental permit obliging them to offer OPS for every ship owner who officially requests it and berths at the port regularly. The port will then need to provide it max. 12 months after the request although an installation can require around 18 months to be planned and built. In this permit, it is also stated that, every 5 years, the port needs to make an investigation about the possibility of offering OPS further depending on their incoming traffic, which quays they use and how many hours the vessels stay at berth.
Also around 2010, Stena Line got their own environmental permit as they are running their own terminals and vessels, and their entire operation themselves. Via Stena’s environmental permit, they became obliged to install OPS, which has become the backbone of OPS in the Port of Gothenburg so far. Since the environmental permit in 2010, Stena Line has built one more OPS installation (in 2015). For this, the Port of Gothenburg supported Stena Line to apply for funding from Klimatklivet – which covered between 40-50% of the total costs of the build
– and to build the station before the terminal management was handed over to Stena Line. Hence, in this case, the Port of Gothenburg is not involved in the OPS operations, the contracts or in selling the service – it is Stena Line that has the direct contract with the electricity provider. The same applies to the remaining high voltage installations. With regards to the low voltage ones, the port has a contract with the electricity provider and sells the electricity to the ships/boats without a profit. The electricity has minimal taxation rates in the case of OPS (tax exemption).
Based on the port’s latest investigation of the possibilities/opportunities to further install OPS, in 2016, the port checked which vessels came to the same quay at least 10 times a year and stayed at berth for at least 8 hours, as well as the costs and potential emissions reductions of installing more OPS. They concluded it does not compensate socioeconomically to consider OPS for other segments at the moment, except for shipping company DFDS and the energy port (tankers) with whom they have come to an OPS agreement.
In 2012, DFDS had started looking into OPS with port of Gothenburg for a ro-ro terminal, for which they received EU funding to install OPS onshore and onboard existing vessels. Yet, this plan was postponed due to the high costs of retrofitting OPS onboard (approx. 1 million EUR to retrofit). More recently, since DFDS built 2 new and larger vessels, they could more easily and cheaply prepare their vessels with OPS capability. So, Port of Gothenburg is now building an OPS station for DFDS – the second ro-ro vessel OPS station the port will have, to be premiered in 2021. New funding from Klimatklivet is covering 40% of the costs for the ships as well as for the port, and the remaining expenses are self-financed by DFDS and Port of Gothenburg. The DFDS vessel Flandria Seaways will be the first one of DFDS vessels to connect at the ro-ro berth 712 in Gothenburg. This terminal providing OPS should lead to a potential CO2 reduction of 650 tons per year (mynewsdesk.com, 2021). See Table 1 above for all terminals in Gothenburg currently offering or preparing to offer OPS.
Port of Gothenburg predicts that CO2 emissions can be greatly reduced (including a potential CO2 reduction of 650 tons per year due to the new station at the new ro-ro terminal), and especially emissions of SOx and NOx can be reduced to a minimum by using OPS, on top of the fact that it will provide a quieter port environment and a better working environment onboard the ships (mynewsdesk.com, 2021). For CO2 emissions reductions in specific, non-fossil fuels could have a larger impact than OPS, hence perceived by the port as an important direction to pursue as well, possibly in combination with OPS.
From the energy segment, Port of Gothenburg gets a couple of small product tankers docking there regularly which are prepared with OPS connection equipment and a transformer onboard. Hence, the Port of Gothenburg applied for funding from Klimatklivet in October 2020 to be able to build OPS and a transformer on the tanker terminal. If successful in getting this funding in 2021, they will build the OPS station and be world pioneers in offering OPS to this segment. This has proven more challenging than the previous installations due to explosion risks and associated costs, costing in total three times as much.
One example of Swedish tankers preparing for OPS is shipping company Terntank, currently building 2 new vessels with OPS capability (Terntank, 2020) to be connected in Port of Gothenburg, in Skarvikshamnen. It is thus currently 4-5 Stena Line vessels, 2 other (initially Stora Enso) vessels, and soon 2 DFDS vessels, as well as 2 tankers using OPS in the near future.
Despite the funding received for OPS installations, the port still has to cover the remaining 50% min. of the expenses themselves. The port did not calculate or does not expect a direct financial return on investment. They expect that the benefit will rather be environmental. The total amount for a land-side installation on the energy port has been estimated at around 27 million SEK, whereas for the ro-ro terminal it was around 7 million SEK, so it can vary greatly depending on the terminals and vessels, and on what is included in the price. This might also differ between countries.
Standards
The port is considering existing safety standards for the explosion risks in terms of type of equipment to use, but there is a shortage of guidance for OPS in terms of operations and choices to be made, according to the port’s sustainability manager. The port has discussed this issue with Port of Rotterdam among others considering implementing OPS for tankers, and the decisions about the type of installation seem to vary. For example, the port of Gothenburg has preferred that the connection point onboard is in the middle of the ship (since that way the size of the vessel does not affect the connection and would not require a longer quay), but Rotterdam has expressed a preference for having it in the stern of the ship. This would result in compatibility difficulties for a ship that travels between Gothenburg and Rotterdam, which has been a general challenge for the ports to work out. Yet, port of Gothenburg launched the idea that the installation onboard would be built in a pressurized room behind the wheelhouse where the cable from shore should be connected, which was an idea shared with ports of Hamburg and Rotterdam and might potentially be adopted by them as well in order to be compatible with each other. Where to have the connection onboard remains an issue even for other ship types, since the standards do not provide an answer to this.
Which frequency to use (50 or 60 Hz) and what voltage to have have also been part of the discussion, but this has been an issue more easily solvable due to the fact that adapters/transformers can be placed ashore and/or onboard. For the ports, it seems cheaper to invest in 50 Hz and a transformer rather than having 60 Hz, and this should be compatible with all new vessels equipped with OPS capability. For older vessels, it might be more difficult to retrofit the necessary adapters.
In terms of voltage, however, the ports at the other end of the vessel routes need to have the same voltage, otherwise the vessels will need much equipment onboard to adapt to different voltages in different ports. The standard’s recommendation is 6,6 kV, according to Port of Gothenburg, and they also believe that 6,6 kV could potentially be a standard more easily met up around the world than higher levels such as 10 or 12 kV. For plugs and electricity types, the port is following existing standards as well.
The opinion surrounding standardization is that some things could be further standardized, such as the position of the onboard connection for each specific ship type, in order to facilitate the choices, the decisions and the implementation, as well as the compatibility between ports. Another thing is the voltage of the electricity provided from ports. If standards do not encompass these aspects, this must be coordinated between ports or with the ship owners before purchase and implementation.
Further standardization beyond these aspects above is not seen as relevant. It might lock ships and ports down into one alternative that does not fit all cases in the best way.
For added flexibility, Port of Gothenburg has preferred to build OPS in containers, to be movable if needed, in case there will be new ships requesting to use it in the future.
Port collaborations and consortia
Port of Gothenburg has attempted contact with different ports for coordination. In 2008, Port of Gothenburg was part of the World’s Ports Climate Initiative (WPCI) project/consortium, leading the OPS working group. This is no longer active as such but initiated the discussion with various ports and authorities regarding standardization. The WPCI project and associated website were rebranded as World’s Ports Sustainability Programme (WPSP) in 2018. This website will make available a map of OPS locations around the world. Another consortium where port of Gothenburg is involved is the European Sea Ports Organization (ESPO).
A lesson learned by Port of Gothenburg from talking to other ports is that the decisions to be made will be case-dependent based on the type of traffic a port receives. This has reportedly been a challenge to explain to politicians, leading to large investments in installations around the world that are apparently not getting the expected uptake/usage. Ferries and ro-pax have been the most clear-cut cases for OPS with the most evident benefits so far. Not all ship segments, however, have been as straightforward a case/market for the usage of OPS.
Ship segments as candidates for OPS
Electricity in some cases might be costlier than using cheap fossil fuels for the auxiliary engines, and such seems to be the case for most tankers. Moreover, tankers tend to trade under time charter agreements or in the spot market, and thus need to travel to different ports ad-hoc rather than the same ports regularly, which further renders their business case for OPS more challenging. Yet, many shipping companies are considering environmental sustainability as part of their business model as well as competitive advantage, hence a motivation to use LNG, OPS, etc.
Container vessels connecting to OPS is an established market in the USA, and Port of Gothenburg is expecting increased interest from this segment to connect in Gothenburg in the future, since many vessels are already prepared with OPS capability.
Equipment and connection procedure
The port of Gothenburg has a switchgear house equipped with frequency converters, switchboards, and transformers. At the quay, there is a fixed hoist/crane with a single cable via which the ship connects to shore power.
Arriving at the port of Gothenburg, the ro-ro vessel Stena Scandinavica moors and discharges. Once unloaded, a crew member enters the onboard connecting room and prepares for the connection to be made. The ship’s side-hatch for OPS is opened and the manoeuvring of the shore crane and the cable into the vessel’s connecting room is done via automatic remote controls in the onboard connecting room. This does therefore not require any additional manning ashore. The cable is manually plugged into the socket onboard by the crew member. The ship transforms the energy voltage received from shore into its operating voltage onboard, as well as the frequency received from shore (50 Hz) into the required frequency onboard (60 Hz, as most ro-ro vessels). There is an inverter room onboard. The auxiliary engines can be fully shut down once the connection is completed (ProcesskontrollEL, 2012). The power consumption can be visualized on a panel onboard. See the following YouTube clip to watch a typical connection procedure onboard the Stena Scandinavica at port of Gothenburg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S99iCNBJYgc&ab_channel=ProcesskontrollELThe land-based high voltage shore connection has been built and equipped by company Processkontroll Elektriska with ABB and Cavotec as subcontractors, and the equipment onboard Stena Scandinavica supplied by Marine Global (ProcesskontrollEL, 2012).
Decision making and stakeholders
In the cases of both Gothenburg and Stockholm, as well as for shipping companies like Stena Line, the residents near port areas and the pollution, noise and vibrations caused by the auxiliary engines have been part of the concern/motivation for OPS. The main facilitator/success factor to implementing OPS has, yet, been the communication and agreements between shipping companies and the port to install OPS. The same has applied to port of Stockholm. Normally the request for OPS comes from a ship owner and they together with the port will then agree about what needs to be installed ashore and onboard. The port of Gothenburg expressed that when the request or question comes from the port to a ship owner instead, it is challenging to get them to see the value of OPS if they perceive that they will only be able to use OPS in one single port. This emphasizes the importance of inter-port communication. It is also important for the port to know how often a ship comes to the same quays.
The energy provider will also have to be a part of the discussions to understand if the power required is available in the specific location. The Port of Gothenburg confirmed that the energy requirements are not an issue except for at their centrally located cruise quay, which would require the installation of a larger cable that would have to go through the city. This would not only be a logistical challenge but also very costly. For such cases, alternative solutions might have to be considered in the future, such as the use of batteries or other.
Regulators seem to also become increasingly involved in the discussions around OPS and new OPS projects. According to the port’s sustainability manager, the Norwegian and Danish regulators have been very active in this topic promoting it in every port and providing funding, as well as proposing higher incentives and tougher regulations. In Sweden today, environmental permits are mandating most ports we have interviewed in Sweden to consider the installation of OPS for every new terminal. The European Union also has a directive that might soon mandate the core European ports to have OPS. Yet, the interviewee was of the opinion that environmental regulations should be technology-neutral, giving ports and ship owners the possibility to choose OPS if suitable but to have the alternative to adopt other suitable technologies, making the reduction of emissions the focus rather than OPS in specific.
As mentioned earlier, talking to sister ports that the ships are calling has been essential with regards to choosing which technologies to purchase (voltage and frequency) and how to install them. Being part of consortia with ports and shipping companies to discuss such aspects can be helpful. For example, the choice between 50 and 60 Hz is normally made between the port and the ships that will utilize the connection, and can also be discussed between ports. When ship and shore are not compatible, a transformer needs to be available. The majority of Swedish ports opt for the 50 Hz-standard in Sweden, and most ferries require 50 Hz.
Manufacturers of OPS-related equipment are also an essential stakeholder.
Hinders to the installation of OPS have been largely related to costs, which differ depending on ship types, power needs etc. (e.g., ferries are 1/10 of the cost of a cruiser because cruisers need more physical equipment due to their increased power needs, and tankers are also costly due to the necessary safety measures and equipment). In such cases, without the support from additional funding, the port might have seen OPS as a difficult business case.
In the negotiations between Port of Gothenburg and DFDS, for example, decision making regarding the placement of the equipment and connections took a long time. Depending on the vessel and the terminal, it might be more practical and safer to place the onboard equipment at the stern of the ship or in the middle, and this also affects the positioning of the onshore station.
Having OPS does not necessarily require extra personnel onshore, since the installations can be automated and taken care of from onboard personnel, depending on the type of installation. Training of the personnel who deals with high-voltage OPS is required, however, in accordance with the safety standards/certificates.
In Sweden, all ports are using clean energy sources, but this may be an issue in other parts of the world.
Future developments
There are ongoing projects at Stena Line looking at, for instance, the use of OPS to charge batteries onboard, and the use of batteries ashore to even out the needs for shore electricity when this is not sufficient. Port of Gothenburg is part of this project. Other ongoing projects at port of Gothenburg are:
The finalizing of the installation in the ro-ro terminal for DFDS;
Funding application for the installation in the energy port;
An investigation regarding their cruise quay and installing OPS there as well (this is delayed due to covid-19);
The WPSP and affiliated consortia looking at OPS coalitions with other ports such as Rotterdam, Vancouver, Los Angeles, etc.
OPS is also seen as a solution that can be combined with other green solutions to help reduce the emissions from shipping and at ports even further in the future (e.g., batteries, scrubbers), especially regarding CO2 emissions. However, the use of OPS might be affected if all fuel options become fossil-free, depending perhaps on the costs of OPS vs. alternative fuels.
Even though this is not an issue in Sweden, it is important to consider the energy source of OPS, which allegedly is a question not fully taken into consideration by some authorities around the world currently. If the energy provided is not coming from a clean source, the significance of OPS might be reduced, as despite removing the pollution from the city centres to more remote locations the overall global emissions would still be left unchanged.
The Port of Gothenburg is working with other port-related departments/operations to help them to reduce CO2 emissions, i.e. vessels, railroads, terminals, trucks. Vessels, for example, will receive a 10% discount on general port fees if they use OPS since they get a better environmental index. In the future, the port might need to charge a fee for OPS but how to bill shipping companies has not yet been fully decided.
References
mynewsdesk.com. (2021). Ny elanslutning minskar koldioxidutsläppen i Göteborgs hamn.