A large Swedish ferry operator HH Ferries Group together with the company ABB has embarked on a large-scale project for the conversion of the two largest ferries of Tycho Brahe and Aurora with diesel traction to electric. After this upgrade they will become the largest Elektrougli in the world.
Today many of the vehicles transferred to electric traction — including water. The characteristic of ferries is that they tend to operate over short distances between the same ports for a long time, creating serious environmental problems for their powerful diesel engines.
Ferry Tycho Brahe and Aurora ply the route Helsingborg (Sweden) to Helsingor (Denmark) with a length of 4 km. Length of the ferry is 238 meters, weight 8414 tons. Annually they carry about 7.5 million passengers and 1.9 million vehicles. Transfer of such large ships to electric traction – a very difficult technical problem, but from the point of view of reduction of harmful emissions it is absolutely justified.
ABB has already begun to be installed on each ferry batteries with a total capacity of 4.2 mW*h 640 batteries at 6.5 kWh will be placed in the upper part of the courts next to two cabins, where there are transformers, converters and cooling system. The cables will be laid from cutting to connection points at both ends of the vessel that will provide fast charging of batteries.
Charging the accumulators will be a giant robotic arm while unloading passengers at the port of arrival. The system operates fully automatically and is able to work even in extreme conditions.
