Portsmouth City Council approved a strategy for shoreside power supply at Portsmouth Port UK, which would allow visiting cruise ships to switch off their engines while berthed.
The cruise port has plans to tackle emissions and carbon, which will help them to become one of the first zero-emission ports in the United Kingdom.
The plans aim to improve air quality and carbon footprint. They have been put together with the Maritime 2050 strategy of the government in mind.
To achieve that, Portsmouth is trying to adopt experimental green technologies. Portsmouth’s City Council, which owns and operates the Port, agreed to support the efforts to provide shore power, subject to securing funding. This features the short-term development of a battery storage solution, for providing shore power to smaller cruise ships, as well as a long-term ambition of supplying all ships that visit the port.
With an existing AI-controlled ‘master’ battery on-site, which is funded by Innovate UK, combined with battery storage being installed alongside the new solar array, the port will have energy that is enough to supply small cruise ships while alongside. One of the long-standing customers of the port, Noble Caledonia, agreed to upgrade their ships to take shore power when the new project goes ahead.
For the longer term, options are being explored to increase the amount of power at the port, so that shore power could be rolled out to all of Portsmouth's berths. However, this would require government support across the ports industry.