A major factor slowing down the more widespread use of plug-in shore power to permit cold ironing is the lack of a safe, troublesome and easy to use standard for the shore to ship connector. Further complicating the problem is the abundance of different voltage and frequency systems found on ships of different nations. At the SMM exhibition in Hamburg last week a step closer to solving this problems was exhibited by the French company New Generation, Natural Gas abbreviated to NG2. The PLUG (Power Generation during Loading and Unloading) is a semi automatic system requiring only one sailor to operate it and to connect to the shore: no shore personnel is required..
A major factor slowing down the more widespread use of plug-in shore power to permit cold ironing is the lack of a safe, troublesome and easy to use standard for the shore to ship connector. Further complicating the problem is the abundance of different voltage and frequency systems found on ships of different nations.
At the SMM exhibition in Hamburg last week a step closer to solving this problems was exhibited by the French company New Generation, Natural Gas abbreviated to NG2. The PLUG (Power Generation during Loading and Unloading) is a semi automatic system requiring only one sailor to operate it with no physical effort and to connect to the shore: no shore personnel is required.
The ship installation is sufficiently compact that it fits within one frame space and a watertight door closes off the system when not in use or at sea. At the shore end of things, a self sealing diaphragm closes off the shore connection preventing any contact with live parts. Lining up the ship and shore connector and mating of the connection is fully automatic. A torque meter monitors the forces on the power lines and if a preset level is reached the safe emergency release procedure is activated sounding an alarm, shutting off the electricity and releasing the power line all within 60 secs. Although the connector is standard it can be used for a variety of electric power systems, varying from 440 to 11,000 volts with a power from 300 kW to 12 MW.