Alternative Marine Power(AMP)…Shore Power…Cold-ironing

Cold-ironing is a key to economic development and expansion in US Ports because it is increasingly the litigated solution favored by environmental groups and because trigeneration can provide reliable, high quality power for digital age businesses. The Pareto approach using trigeneration provides a secure source of power in ports and port areas for Homeland Security if the electrical grid fails.

In comparison with a central T&D solution, just one 6 MW micro generator installation with combined heat and power would provide dramatic improvement in emissions/particulate reduction in a port area:

Total Emissions Reductions 2007-2016

• Millions of dollars will need to be spent just in transmission and distribution system upgrades to meet America’s ports’ future electrical power needs for cold-ironing or for port expansion and economic development from central power plants/grid sources.

• Transmission and distribution system upgrades may take 5 to 10 to 15 years to implement, thereby threatening a deceleration in Port economic development and derailing timely solutions to air pollution problems that could be solved by cold ironing. There is no evidence that current central power plants feeding into the grid can support the electrical power needs of America’s ports over the next 5-20 years.

• A series of small, environmentally clean micro generators could be introduced to provide power in a much shorter time frame of 9-12 months and could defer or even avoid grid related transmission and distribution upgrades. They could be deployed as modular units as navigation companies and their host terminals agree to cold iron, thereby avoiding excess, unused capacity pertaining to a large, one-time upgrades of central power plant capability and associated transmission and distribution upgrades.

• Because excess thermal energy from micro generators can be used for refrigeration (or heating), participating ports (and port communities) can benefit both from electricity rates guaranteed to be at or below comparable grid power in similar applications and save on expenses related to cooling and heating.

• On-site micro generation could enable a Port to hedge risks of outages, surges, and summer peak pricing spikes that have been prevalent in the national grid power market.

• After much education and negotiation, the NRDC and local environmental groups (allied with NRDC in air pollution legal actions against California ports) have indicated that they would not stand in the way of implementing Pareto Energy’s micro generation approach because of the speed of implementation and the benefits of negative net emissions.

• Developing alternative ways to deploy power from on-shore micro generators could significantly reduce ship retrofit costs and time-delays associated with adopting cold ironing.

• Pareto Energy’s very preliminary work exploring alternative power solutions has drawn considerable interest of several US ports and also from power equipment vendors that see a large new market if an on-site power solution is developed for cold-ironing.

Pareto Energy, Ltd. believes that the introduction of micro generators with CHP can significantly lower electrical energy costs associated with implementing cold-ironing. Together with some hopeful alternatives to costly ship conversions, micro generation can make it possible for many more vessels to participate in cold-ironing.

Vessels with high hotelling power demand (e.g. cruise ships), frequent port calls, and significant time at berth consume the most energy and, therefore, provide greater potential for emissions reductions.