A new shore power facility has entered into service at the German port of Cuxhaven, in North Sea, west of Hamburg, on 25 May 2018, following an order to Siemens in December 2017. The ShoreCONNECT in Cuxhaven will mainly be used by vessels transporting Siemens Gamesa’s wind turbine parts.
The facility enables ships to switch off their diesel generators and plug into Siharbor, a shore-side power infrastructure developed by Siemens, intended to prevent local emissions and noise.
The ShoreCONNECT power supply system in Cuxhaven was commissioned by EWE Netz GmbH, the regional power utility, and built for Niedersachsen Ports (NPorts), a north-German harbor infrastructure company. It was conceived for RoRo ships, the cargoes of which are driven onto a ship.
The system supplies specially adapted freighter cable feeder systems to be supplied with electrical energy from the public power grid. The technology is already in use in Lübeck and Hamburg Altona.
Thomas Kopel, a sales engineer at Siemens who is responsible for infrastructure customers, said:
If we assume that a ship is tied up in Cuxhaven once a week for 24 hours, its diesel generators emit up to 359 metric tons of CO2.