Blog post -
Joint mooring, shore power system wins innovation award
We're delighted to report that our combined automated mooring and shore power system has won the inaugural Innovation of the Year Award at the Electric & Hybrid World Expo 2014, an event that "honoured the world's finest engineers, innovations and products in the electric and hybrid marine arena."
The award panel, made up of figures drawn from the ports sector and media, were asked to vote for "the pioneering technology or technical innovation that they felt pushed the boundaries and contributed in some way to making electric and hybrid propulsion possible and viable."
Other award categories included Supplier of the Year, Electric & Hybrid Propulsion System of the Year and Propulsion System Manufacturer of the Year.
The jury selected our combined automated mooring and shore power system, currently being installed at two passenger ferry berths in Norway, that will be used by the world’s first fully battery powered, catamaran-hulled ferry, run by Norwegian ferry operator Norled.
In service separately at a large number and wide variety of applications worldwide, this is the first time that we are fully integrating our MoorMaster™ automated mooring and Alternative Maritime Power (AMP) technologies into a single system.
The 80m-long vessel will have capacity for around 120 cars and 360 passengers, and will make 17 crossings of the Sognefjord daily. It is scheduled to enter service in 2015.
The mooring system will signal to the AMP unit when the ship is secure, and a laser sensor will then guide the AMP connector to a hatch in the side of the vessel, connect to the ship’s battery and start charging.
By using MoorMaster™ the ferry’s propeller system can be switched off for nine minutes during each 10-minute boarding process, giving more than sufficient time to connect to the Cavotec AMP system to charge the on-board batteries.
With around 6,000 port calls made annually on the route, the air quality improvement and fuel cost savings compared to using conventional mooring and power systems is considerable.
