Aurora Botnia battery retrofit complete

Turku repair yard in Naantali, Finland, has delivered Aurora Botnia, the electrified RoPax ferry now with some 12.6 MWh of battery capacity on board, back to owner Wasaline.
Formerly running on a mix of LNG and bio-LNG, Wasaline opted to retrofit Aurora Botnia with one of the largest battery installations in the shipping industry, bringing its capacity up from 2.2MWh to 12.6MWh, and incorporating a dual-chemistry setup which uses both lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries – designed to provide large amounts of energy in short bursts – and long-life lithium iron phosphate (LFP) ‘energy’ batteries designed to maximise energy density on board.
The vessel returned from Turku on Sunday, January 11th, with the vast battery pack and maintenance performed on its bow thrusters and azipods. DNV carried out inspections on the vessel; passenger areas were upgraded, and the car deck was repainted.
The vessel will now ply its 100 km route between Vaasa and Umeå while covering some 23% of its energy demand using battery electricity. But the battery system will provide outsize fuel efficiency savings, too, using peak-shaving, allowing the vessel’s LNG-burning engines to operate at their most efficient load range for entire voyages.
“To our knowledge, it is the first time this dual-battery approach has been realised in a maritime retrofit… [and] one of the most technically ambitious hybrid conversions yet attempted on a RoPax ferry,” said Joonatan Haukilehto, head of New Technologies at Foreship recently. Foreship Ltd. supported Wasaline with technological and strategic input for the retrofit.