Kiel provides emission-free power to ships

The port is the building contractor for the shore-based power plant, built by Siemens. Investment in the plant totalled €1.2m, of which €400,000 was funded by the state of Schleswig-Holstein. It has a maximum connection capacity of 4.5MW at 10KV and a mains frequency of 50Hz.

Dr Dirk Claus, managing director of the Port of Kiel, said: “Because of its considerable capacity and reagular daily operation, a high level of environmental utilisation will be achieved. The new plant will deliver the largest amount of shore-based electric power (for ships) in the whole of Germany.”

Further provision

Schwedenkai Terminal and the cruise shipping terminal at Ostseekai will follow the Norwegenkai example and are to get shore-based power supply capability for ships in the coming year.

Mr Claus said the port aims to use shore-based electricity to cover 60% of the power requirements of ships calling at Kiel in the future.

Color Line’s, Color Fantasy and Color Magic, link Kiel with Oslo daily. Their annual power requirement for the time they spend in Kiel is about 4m kilowatt hours. Color Line ship have been plugged in on- shore in Oslo since 2011 and in all four Norwegian ports since 2017.

Automatic system

The hub of the plant is an air-insulated, metal-enclosed, medium voltage switch unit. The PLUG shore to ship transfer station is from French manufacturer NG3 and is equipped with a programmed logic control unit (PLC) which communicates with the land station’s switching gear.

All the necessary switching commands passed on by the ship via the system’s interface are carried out automatically. Before power is transferred from shore to ship, however, the system first checks for correct plug and cable connections. Once this has taken place, the connection to shore is switched on and the ship synchronises itself with the shore plant, which then handles supply.