With ambitious targets to reduce its carbon intensity by 50% across its fleet in 2030, Maersk Supply Service has now taken the next step in its decarbonisation journey and ordered a battery pack for one of its M-class vessels.
“Maersk Supply Service is taking an active role in decarbonising the offshore support vessel sector. This requires both behavioural changes in the way we operate our vessels, as well as technological upgrades to our fleet. With this new hybrid battery solution upgrade, we take a significant step forward in our path to further reduce the emissions from our diesel-electric vessels. The use of hybrid batteries/energy storage systems has proven to be an effective solution within the platform supply vessel (PSV) sector; however, we believe that we are on the leading edge in terms of bringing this technology into the Anchor-Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) segment. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the world’s first AHTS hybrid battery conversion,” says Mark Handin, COO of Maersk Supply Service.
Maersk Supply Service has chosen Wärtsilä as the supplier of the hybrid battery as its extended battery life and innovative design allows for reduced vessel emissions, reduced maintenance and increased operational performance.
Maersk Minder has been selected for Company's first vessel battery installation. The vessel will operate in the North Sea from Q3 2021, with plans to install the battery in late 2021 or early 2022, depending on delivery time. The concept is designed to meet Company's customers demand for lower carbon vessels.
“The expectation is that the new battery pack will decrease the fuel consumption and thereby reduce CO2 emissions by 15%. The responsibilities for anchor handling vessels vary considerably from heavy tows of offshore floating units to subsea work in Dynamic Positioning mode. With the specialised tasks and variety of operational capabilities, it is important that we thoroughly test the vessel setup utilising the batteries and validate the CO2 savings during the first few months of operations,” says Allan H. Rasmussen, Head of Technical Organisation, and responsible for the decarbonisation initiatives in Maersk Supply Service.
“The Wärtsilä Low Loss Hybrid battery system (LLH) seamlessly integrates with a conventional engine, like Maersk Minder. Our Low Loss Hybrid offers significant efficiency improvement by running the engines on optimal load and absorbing many of the load fluctuations through batteries. We see this renewable LLH solution as a great fit for Anchor Handling Tug Supply Vessels,” says Kenneth Bang, Account Manager from Wärtsilä.
Since 2018, Maersk Supply Service has reduced its carbon intensity by more than 13% across its fleet. In addition, it has allocated resources for the coming years to continue with technical upgrades to reduce its emissions further.