Jun
2
Your Two Bits
By William Perry
Arguably, the use of shoreside power can protect James Bay's local air quality.
Victoria wishes to join San Francisco, Juneau, Seattle and eventually Vancouver, but first must look at the savings compared to the reality.
Shore power, or AMP, also known as cold ironing, allows ships to shut down their diesel-powered engines when in port. A ship on a half-day port call can cut down on large amounts of nitrous oxides, sulphur oxides, and CO2 emissions using cold ironing.
While it looks to be a winning proposition for all parties (and the environment), there are many hurdles to more wide-spread adoption of cold ironing for cruise ships. Most importantly, of course, are the costs - for building the shore power facility, retro-fitting ships with necessary electrical equipment, and purchasing shore power.
Retro-fitting each ship takes around $500,000. Also, there are currently no standards for shore power systems. This means a port/cruise company has to make the investment with the possibility that it may not work on all ships/ports.
It also limits the cruise ships to this one dock and pier, unless the port can make the investments necessary to add more installations. Here in Victoria it could be in excess of $11 million, according to BC Hydro.
That can't happen unless the port has a sufficient number of cruise ships docking to make it feasible. This means that shore power can currently be a practical solution only at big ports.
There's also the problem that the power needs of cruise ships, cargo freighters, and tankers are all different. Some ports such as Los Angeles already has an AMP for cargo ships, which are the easiest since they can load and unload using shore-based cranes. Cruise ships need a lot more power when they're docked.
Another problem is whether or not the city's power grid can bear the electrical load of cold ironing a lot of cruise ships. A cruise ship's energy consumption consists of two parts - propulsion (not required when docked) and hotel load. The shore power setup in Juneau supplies 13 megawatts to cruise ships. Compare that against the 900MW consumed by the entire city of San Francisco, and it's not hard to see how this could quickly end up creating a power shortage.
In the past, you would have two big engines to drive the vessel and three others to supply the large electrical hotel load. This would underutilize the horse power in the vessel. In newer ships, all the engines are generators and they supply one common electrical bus. Engineers can then adapt power supply to the demand, making the whole process a little bit more efficient, much like a power utility on land.
Most cruise ships have three or five to nine identical medium speed diesel generators.
The number of units provides for the power needs and reduces down time and increases profitability. The start-up time for propulsion takes many hours. The ships are in Victoria for some 12 to 14 hours, which essentially creates the scenario that the engines will only be shut down for a handful of hours. During start up the emissions are extremely high, and I suggest, would be greater than allowing the engines to run for the entire time in Port.
There are many concerns and costs associated with providing shore power to the cruise ships. It remains uncertain whether or not the cruise lines will make the investments to upgrade and/or pay the market value for the power. Ports of call can only push so much before the companies take their businesses elsewhere. The reality for the cruise lines is maintaining a low operating cost within an economy that has reduced the number of potential passengers, which they compete for all the time with each other.
FYI - my background saw me employed for Royal Caribbean in 2006/2007 as Chief Engineer onboard one of the largest ships. My letter is based on that direct involvement.