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This weeks Ship Photo of The Week is of the Alaskan Navigator docked at BP Terminal Pier T at The Port of Long Beach. What’s exciting about this is that it is the world’s first oil tanker terminal equipped with shore power to eliminate air emissions from docked vessels.  Instead of running its diesel engines while at berth, the 941-foot Navigator plugged into a shore-side electricty grid to power its off-loading operations.  The Port of Long Beach tells us:

Shore power, also known as “cold-ironing,” allows a specially equipped vessel to plug in at berth. The vessel can then draw power for its pumps, communications, ventilation, lighting and other needs from Southern California Edison, instead of its own diesel engines. Providing shore power to an off-loading oil tanker is the pollution-reducing equivalent of removing 187,000 cars from the road for a day. In a year, shore power will eliminate more than 30 tons of pollution.

The BP shore power installation delivers enough electricity to power about 5,500 homes — up to 8 megawatts at 6,660 volts. The Alaska Tanker Company has equipped two of vessels that regularly visit the Port to be able to plug into the BP Terminal on Pier T, which supplies local refineries with crude oil. The joint project, which was undertaken voluntarily, was completed at a cost of $23.7 million — $17.5 million from the Port and $6.2 million from BP.

Prior to its modification, the Alaskan Navigator burned nearly 10,000 gallons of diesel each day in port to power massive pumps needed to off-load its oil.

The Pier T project cost $23.7 million to build – $17.5 million from the Port and $6.2 million from BP – and took three years to complete.

Watch BP Promo on Shore-Side Power

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