News / Battery-powered 850 teu box ships herald 'second wave' of electrification

To operate on electrical power, the cliché goes, a ship would need to tow a ship-sized battery behind it. But don’t tell Eitzen Electric, which is developing a pair of 850 teu all-battery vessels, with a vast 100MWh of energy storage on board.

Despite several early battery-electric designs including Yara Birkeland and Cosco’s Greenwater 01, container lines appeared to have cooled on battery-electrification recently, giving way for ferries to take the lead.

This has led to a number of interesting retrofit projects, with ferries being hybridised – a process which serves the dual purpose of leveraging entirely battery power for some of the voyage, and allowing ultra fuel-efficient operation on conventional propulsion.

In addition to the projects of this type already covered by The Loadstar, Scandlines vessels Deutschland and Schleswig-Holstein are set to be converted in August and December, respectively, with 5MWh of battery capacity added to each.

On completion in early 2026, the vessels will be able to operate between Puttgarden and Rødby, reducing fuel consumption by as much as 80% – likely a substantial life-extension for the two 1997-built ferries. Scandlines is also adding capacity on the route with Futura, an all-electric newbuild set to be delivered this year.

But now, shipping lines have returned to the table. Eitzen is to order two battery-powered 850 teu containerships to operate in the North Sea, each carrying some 100MWh of battery packs (for comparison, the world’s largest operational wind turbine, MySE 18X, generates 20MWh).

Eitzen Avanti has received a $20.2m grant from Norway’s state-owned innovation fund, Enova, to build the vessels.

“These projects each show in their own way what is possible with battery electrification in shipping,” said Andreas Forsnes Jahn, Enova maritime senior advisor.

Enova is also providing $2.1m for charging infrastructure at the port of Oslo, where connection to the Norwegian grid will allow vessels to benefit from cheap zero-emission hydropower.

The Eitzen vessels will use Zen batteries, developed in Norway, and designed to maximise capacity while allowing for seawater cooling. Less counter-intuitive than it might sound, battery water-cooling promises to prevent thermal runaway by generating a curtain of water to screen cells from one another in the event of a defect.

“The technology is now mature and the projects exist,” said Enova’s Mr Jahn. “If the electrification of car ferries was the first wave, we hope this will be the start of the second electrification wave in shortsea shipping.”

In contrast with the exorbitant cost of fuelling vessels with green ammonia or methanol, battery-electric vessels could be powered very cheaply indeed.

In the UK last year, some 8.3TWh of wind power was ‘curtailed’ – wasted – costing consumers £393m. This problem is to do with weak grid connections, meaning power cannot get to where it is needed; but another major issue is a lack of demand at times when wind is blowing and turbines are spinning.

According to EU research, without sufficient battery storage and international grid connections, rollouts of wind energy across the continent could lead to some 310TWh of curtailment annually by 2040; a terrible waste from grids’ point of view, but a potential goldmine of cheap energy for battery-electric ships, especially those docked and charging at night.

On top of this, UMAS’s Tristan Smith told The Loadstar ships travelling internationally using electrical energy could generate an additional revenue stream via the sale of emissions overperformance surplus units (SUs), under the IMO’s mid-term measures, from 2028.

“[This] should create added business case for shore power, especially where there is low carbon electricity supply,” he said.

“[Recent] discussions signal increased collaboration on electrification and harmonisation of UK/EU ETS, which is good news for electrifying some of the [UK-France] routes which are such obvious candidates for [electrification].”