Batteries in Offshore Support Vessels - Pollution, Climate Impact and Economics

Haakon Elizabeth Lindstad,Gunnar S Eskeland,Agathe Rialland

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2882009

Haakon Elizabeth Lindstad, Gunnar S Eskeland + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2882009

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Abstract

This paper assesses the pros and the cons of installing batteries on offshore support vessels. These vessels are specially designed to provide services to oil and gas operations, such as anchor handling, supply and subsea operations. They have multiple engines and advanced dynamic positioning systems to ensure that they can perform their duties with high reliability at nearly any sea state. Combined with high safety requirements, this has resulted in general operational patterns with vessels running multiple combustion engines even at calm water conditions. For emissions, low engine loads yield high emissions of exhaust gases such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and aerosols such as black carbon (BC), due to less favorable combustion conditions. The high span for these vessels between low loads and high, and their great need for potential power at short notice, motivate our examination of hybrid setups with electric: the vessel segment should be more favorable than many. We find that combining batteries with combustion engines reduces local pollution and climate impact, while the economics with current battery cost and fuel prices is good enough for new vessels, but not good enough for retrofits.

Highlights

Offshore support vessels, i.e. vessels for supply, standby, anchor handling and subsea operations, have multiple combustion engines and dynamic positioning systems to ensure that they can perform their duties with a high reliability at nearly any sea state
Our results indicate that combining batteries with combustion engines reduces local pollution and climate impact
When focus is on reducing local pollution, the reduction of harmful exhaust gases enabled by a hybrid solution is independent of operational area and in the magnitude of 25–30%

Summary

Introduction

I.e. vessels for supply, standby, anchor handling and subsea operations, have multiple combustion engines and dynamic positioning systems to ensure that they can perform their duties with a high reliability at nearly any sea state. The DP mode must keep power resources available at any time sufficient to handle peak loads caused by extreme waves and wind variations, even in combination with failure of one of the main vessel engines This has resulted in a general operational pattern with vessels running multiple engines simultaneously even at calm sea conditions when serving the oil and gas installations, i.e. inside a radius of 500 m. One option for reducing the emissions and climate impacts in maritime shipping is through hybrid power technology It is promising for vessels operating under varying conditions, and we conduct this analysis on offshore vessels because of their great variation in actual loads and their great need for potential load at short notice.

Model description

Application and analysis

Power and propulsion setups for offshore support vessels

Fuel consumption and cost for alternative hybrid power setups

Findings

Conclusions