Future Development of Electric Ships Expected

Ao Yangli

Environmental protection is the eternal theme of the development of the shipbuilding industry, and exploration and innovation is the inexhaustible driving force of the development of the shipbuilding industry. On June 13,the first seminar on the innovation and development of electric ships was held in Ningde, Fujian Province, which is the first seminar on electric ships in the shipbuilding industry. More than 130 experts and scholars from relevant industry associations, shipbuilding and marine equipment enterprises, scientific research institutes, shipping companies and colleges and universities met to discuss the key technologies, standards and regulations of electric ships, so as to provide suggestions for promoting the development of electric ships.

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of global maritime environmental protection standards and requirements, lithium battery, as a clean energy, has become one of the hotspots in the ship power industry. At present,China's electric ship technology has developed rapidly, and has made some

achievements. In January this year, the world's first 2000-ton pure electric ship was delivered in Guangzhou, filling in the market gap of the same tonnage inland river dual electrically driven bulk carrier in the world. However, from the point of view of market scale, the widespread application of electric ships in China needs breakthrough of many bottlenecks,and there is still a long way to go.

Breakthrough in Key Technologies

As an environmentally friendly ship,like an LNG-powered ship, the electric ship has become the new favorite of the market. As known to all, traditional ships with diesel engine as power system will produce a large number of waste emission pollutants in the course of navigation, and electric ships can meet the requirements of energy saving and emission reduction in the shipping industry because of the advantages of zero emission and low noise. In the past decade, the global delivery of electric ships has also increased significantly. According to the statistics of China Shipbuilding Industry Economic and Market Research Center,since 2008, with the implementation of new regulations on ship emissions such as the European Union and the IMO, the growing maturity of marine battery and hybrid power technology, electric ships are delivered every year, and the number of deliveries is on the rise, and more orders are expected to emerge after 2020.Compared with before 2008, only sporadic electric ships were delivered globally.

After years of development,global electric ship technology has also continuously achieved breakthroughs,which has laid the foundation for its market promotion. According to Huang Jialin, chairman of Hangzhou Modern Ship Design and Research Co., Ltd., major breakthroughs have been made in the key technologies of lithium-ion battery energy storage system at home and abroad,and a lot of research results have been obtained one after another, such as marine power system networking technology, ship electric propulsion technology, highpower grid-connected technology and so on. In addition, due to safety and economic considerations, lithium iron phosphate power battery management system has developed rapidly. The increase of charge and discharge rate makes the ship startup acceleration and power control better,providing technical conditions for the popularization and application of real ships.

Taking the 2,000-ton pure electric self-discharge vessel built by CSSC Guangzhou Shipyard International Company Limited (GSI) as an example,the ship is the world's first completed and delivered kiloton pure electric ship provided with super-capacitor+superhigh power lithium battery with a capacity of about 2,400 kWh, and the charging can be completed in about 2-hour cargo handling. During the design and construction process, relevant enterprises broke through complete technical problems of large-capacity new energy electric ship design, shore power connection and rapid charging system,making the ship's performance reach the world's leading level.

“The development of pure electric ships abroad is relatively early, and Norway is the country with the largest number of large electric ships operating in the world. Compared with foreign countries, the development of pure electric ships in China started late, and the market scale is not large enough, but with rapid development speed and a wide variety of application types, the main ship types are passenger ships, ferries, public service vessels and bulk carriers. The battery capacity is also much higher than that of foreign countries, and the battery design capacity of the Three Gorges passenger ship under construction has reached 7500 kilowatt-hours”said Ji Yongbo, director of the Research Center for Ship Transport Technology of the Institute of Water Transport Sciences under the Ministry of Transport.

Main application fields of electric ships in China are cargo ships on the Yangtze River, the Pearl River and other inland rivers, coastal urban ferries, tourist boats and port tugboats. At present, there are about 130,000 inland river ships in China, and the total number of ships in the Yangtze River and Beijing-Hangzhou Canal is more than 60,000. By contrast,the number of electric ships is very small-- only a little more than 20 inland river electric ships have been built.

Problem of Scale Promotion Remains to be Solved

The proportion of electric ships in the inland waterway ship market is small,which is closely related to many difficult problems faced by its scale promotion and application.

In terms of economy, due to the high cost of battery, the initial investment of ship construction is large; the life of the marine lithium battery is 10 years,and the life cycle of the ship is usually 30 years. The cost of replacing batteries during the period is relatively high. The initial construction investment of power supply facilities is relatively large, and the cost of operation and maintenance is high. In terms of technology, the technical security of anchorage cross-ship power supply is facing challenges, and the technical difficulty of providing electric power supply by an anchored ship in the river is quite difficult. In addition, there are some problems such as insufficient capacity of existing shore facilities,different power system and insufficient compatibility of equipment” Ji Yongbo said.

The disunity of products and technical standards also limits the development of electric ship industry.Hong Zhichao, assistant director of the Science Popularization Department of the CSNAME, said there have been various standards for charging piles in the past years of the development of electric vehicles. It was not until 2018 that the relevant state departments issued five newly revised national standards for charging interfaces and communication protocols for electric vehicles. However,in the field of electric ships, no standard for charging equipment form has been established, and the charging equipment for existing pure electric ships is still one policy for one ship.

In view of the problems, industry experts voiced many suggestions and countermeasures. “We should make efforts to improve battery performance,reduce prices, increase energy density and take into account environmental protection and safety; update ship design and construction technology, encourage the coexistence of various lithium battery technologies, and give priority to the development of economical hybrid electric driving systems, which is conducive to the rapid formation of battery ship market scale and boosting industry confidence;strengthen the construction of shore power, expand the scale, and establish a unified charging form, develop wireless charging technology given the conditions,and actively explore some new models,such as shore-based power grid, and carry out large-scale push on inland rivers, and bring great change to inland river transport.” In the opinion of Hong Zhichao, moreover, we should strengthen the application of market mechanism,focus on the promotion of urban ferry,sightseeing ship, inland river ship, and pay special attention to the market of sightseeing ships. At present, people's demand for the tourism experience is increasingly high, the traditional sightseeing ship is noisy, and the tourist experience is poor, it is very suitable for promoting electric ships whether in environmental protection demand or operation scenario,” he said.

In order to improve the economics of electric ship, Huang Jialin, chairman of Hangzhou Modern Ship Design and Research Co., Ltd., suggested optimizing the design in increasing the carrying capacity of ships and reducing the energy consumption of ship navigation; reasonable allocation of charging facilities in the light of different waterways, and reducing the number of batteries on board and reducing the battery cost, thus making electric ships more economical.

“just like new energy vehicles,in promoting the scale of electric ships,we should also actively win the support of state policy.” Ji Yongbo believes that to promote the large-scale development of electric ships, we should also promote state-owned enterprises to give priority to the development of pure electric ships and play a demonstration and leading role in the industry, strengthen industryuniversity-research cooperation,accelerate the transformation of technological achievements, and promote the improvement of the industry standard system.

In the formulation of electric ship related industry standards, Li Qiang, former vice president of CSSC China Institute of marine Technology& Economy(CIMTEC), believes that with the development of electric ships in the future, a series of new standard requirements will arise in the basic general purpose, overall design, battery safety, performance evaluation and test as well as testing, operation management and maintenance of electric ships. Therefore,based on the present situation of the development of electric ships in China,we should carry out the development of electric ship standards step by step, form a number of key technical standards, and provide all-dimensional standardized technical support and guarantee for the core technology research, system equipment development and real ship application of Chinese electric ships,and lead the development of electric ship industry.

Power Battery Enterprises Snatch Market Share

Power battery is the most core supporting equipment of an electric ship. Internationally, the world's largest supplier of electric ship batteries is Corvus Energy of Canada, which occupies more than 44% of the market share and is basically in a monopoly position. The lithium polymer battery module developed by the company has been certified by DNV GL, LR and ABS,and has participated in more than 140 ship projects with a total installation power of 100MWh.

“The Chinese electric ship industry is at a stage of rapidly getting off the ground, and there are not many mature suppliers in the field of marine power batteries.” According to Wang Guanghong, vice director of GSI’s Electromechanical Design Department,power battery and other core components of the world's first 2000-ton pure electric ship built by the company were provided by Shanghai Ruihua (Group) Co., Ltd.

In the face of the rapidly developing and promising electric ship market, in addition to Shanghai Ruihua, CATL, BYD Auto and other new energy enterprises have entered the field of electric ships,actively made layout, seized the first opportunity, which will provide strong support for the development of the electric ship industry, and ship electrification will also help these enterprises to open up new markets.

As the world's largest technologically leading power battery enterprise, CATL is aiming at the field of electric ships to broaden the market.In January this year, CATL signed a strategic cooperation agreement with CCS Wuhan Rules & Research Institute, which will cooperate with CCS in promoting the research of ship technical standards for battery system and water applications, and speeding up the recognition and inspection of related battery products. “Lithium iron phosphate battery has become the best choice for marine power battery at the present stage because of its advantages of high safety, long life, low cost and balanced performance.” Wu Kai, CATL vice president, said the company has conquered technical problems of safety,endurance and service life of marine battery, with its battery products applied in real ship - providing equipment for the first modified pure electric public service vessel on the Yangtze River, Coast Guard 12909. At present, CATL is promoting sightseeing cruise ships, container ships,tugs, passenger ferries, yachts and other electric ship projects. Furthermore, at the first electric ship innovation and development conference, CATL signed cooperation intention agreements with several scientific research institutes and well-known shipping companies to jointly promote the Lianyungang pure electric tugboat R&D project, marine power lithium battery related projects and so on.

Electric ship is the inevitable product of the intelligent and green development of ships, and it is also an important way to realize energy saving and emission reduction and transformation and upgrading in the shipbuilding industry.At present, promoting the development of electric ships and related supporting equipment has been incorporated in China's Action Plan for Upgrading the Capacity of Marine Equipment Industry(2016-2020) and the Action Plan for Deepening Structural Adjustment and Speeding up Transformation and Upgrading of the Shipbuilding Industry(2016-2020). Industry experts believe that China has unique technical and industrial advantages in the development of electric ships, with the concerted efforts of the government, shipbuilding and marine equipment enterprises,design institutes and colleges and universities, the scale popularization and application of electric ships is imminent,which will surely play a positive role in the construction of green waterborne traffic and the development of intelligent shipping.