Public Funding for Gac Services (UK) Ltd

With the pressure to reduce emissions in the maritime industry, there has been an increase in demand over the past years for ports and harbours to provide cold-ironing services so that vessels can stop running their shipboard engines for auxiliary hotel loads when at berth, and in turn reduce emissions. In response to this, numerous solutions for providing shoreside power supply to these vessels have been developed and installed. However, there is no ready solution which provides this option for vessels which are at anchorages. The project involves the technical, economical and operational feasibility study of a near-shore cold-ironing solution, specifically catered for consistent and sufficient power supply to cruise liners in port anchorages, using a relevant case study (such as the Hatston Pier) as a basis. Orcades Marine has been working on a near-shore cold-ironing design using Hatston Pier as a potential use case. Given the rising demand for cold-ironing from cruise liners, and the steady traffic of cruise ships at Hatston, the Orkney Island Council Harbour Authority expressing explicit interest in the concept. It is intended for the solution to sustain the hotel loads of a cruise ship at anchorages, which would require hefty cable management system, making the operation of connecting the cable to the ship at sea to be challenging. Orcades Marine's team which has decades of operational experience with ports and vessel operations, including cruise ships, have devised a technical solution to make this task practical and safe. The project will be carried out by a team of experts from Orcades Marine, Orkney Island Council Harbour Authority, Schneider Electric UK, GAC UK and Aquatera. The team is highly experience in the own fields, allowing for the delivery of a comprehensive project, covering considerations from engineering (both marine and shoreside infrastructure), safety, harbour operations and management, to environmental and stakeholder engagement.