Maersk Supply Service and Ørsted to test offshore charging buoy to reduce vessel emissions (VIDEO)

Monday, September 28 2020

Maersk Supply Service and Ørsted have joined forces to test a proto-type buoy that will act as both a safe mooring point and a charging station for vessels, potentially displacing a significant amount of marine fuel with green electricity.

The solution, developed by Maersk Supply Service, will be tested on one of Ørsted’s offshore wind farms in 2021.

The charging buoy will be tested in the second half of 2021, where it will supply overnight power to one of Ørsted’s service vessels.

Upon technical validation and commercial ramp up, the electrical charging buoy has significant potential, short to medium term, to contribute positively to reduce emissions for the maritime industry. This will happen through displacing tens of thousands of tons of fuel consumed every year in the wider maritime sector by enabling inactive vessels to turn engines off and replace energy consumption and charge batteries with renewable electricity. Within five years of global operation, Maersk Supply Service has the ambition to remove 5.5 million tons of CO2, additionally avoiding particulate matter, NOx, and Sox.

Ørsted intends to make any intellectual property generated in designing the integration of the buoy into the offshore wind asset publicly available to maximise the uptake potential of this carbon reduction innovation across the offshore wind sector.

For the demonstration phase of the project, Maersk Supply Service has received one of the largest EUDP grants (Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme, under the Danish Energy Agency) in 2020 supporting with DKK 22mn to the engineering and demonstration of the power buoy. The Danish Maritime Fund has provided initial co-financing to conceptualise the project.

Watch this amination of the concept.