Shell opens first megawatt EV charging station for land AND sea

Shell Marine just opened a novel new megawatt charging station designed to service both land-based and ocean-going battery-electric vehicles.

Dubbed “Megawatt Charging System” by Shell Marine, the DCFC station is fitted with two unique boom arms, one to service trucks and one to service boats. Shell hopes the design will help reduce the costs associated with adding chargers for vessel operators by promoting a single common charging system standard for trucks and material handlers onto seagoing vessels, it will allow the many vehicle classes commonly found at busy seaside ports to use the same infrastructure without duplicating infrastructure investment.

“We believe this solution will be helpful for shipping companies that control and operate logistics businesses across the supply chain,” explains Shell Marine President Melissa Williams. “(They) often have facilities that serve both water side and land side.”

Megawatt charging port

“There are not that many electric trucks and vessels yet, so with this we’re investing ahead of the market that is growing quickly,” says Hilmar van den Dool, General Manager eMobility at Shell. “It is in line with our ambition to provide more and cleaner energy solutions.”

The sea/land DCFC station was installed at the Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam (ETCA), Shell’s electric innovation center in the Netherlands. The site also houses a wide array of renewable infrastructure demonstrators, like battery-powered EV chargers and a hydrogen electrolyzer. Shell hopes to roll out additional examples of its new sea/land charging solution at other sites.

Electrek’s Take

If you think the pleb’s confusion around competing EV charging standards in the on-road space is a big deal, you can take that and multiply it by ten and you’ll still be nowhere near the chaos of the off-road and heavy equipment space.

Between Chinese-standard ports in wide use at port terminals, the proliferation of CCS-equipped equipment coming out of Volvo CE and Penta, and the – whatever is happening in the marine space (imagine me waving at the ocean, dismissively) all coming together at ports, a single charging standard accessible to every vehicle coming in and out of there would go a huge way towards the universal adoption of BEVs.

SOURCES | IMAGES: Shell; Maritime Executive.