Kongsberg Maritime has selected battery company Leclanché as its battery partner and supplier of customized marine energy storage platforms.

Through the partnership, Leclanché will be an asset to Kongsberg’s new generation of hybrid power platforms, which includes “cutting-edge autonomous and crewed vessel newbuilds.”

“The partnership between Kongsberg Maritime, one of the world’s leading providers of electrification solutions to the maritime industry and Leclanché has the potential to be game changing as it brings low and zero-emission solutions to the sizeable and fast growing electric and hybrid marine market,” explains Anil Srivastava, CEO of Leclanché.

“Leclanché’s focus on maritime is an essential component of our focus on the electrification of fleets and maritime is ideally suited to both our superior battery systems and our partnership approach to deliver emissions busting solutions. We are seeing a paradigm shift in the maritime industry towards electric power and partnerships with world class industry leaders such as Kongsberg further demonstrate that Leclanché’s opportunity is now.”

With its batteries expected to be an “integral part” of Kongsberg’s hybrid platforms, Leclanché will deliver what is considered one of the largest single marine battery system orders to date for nine vessels totaling 45MWh batteries.

The systems will be built at Leclanché’s facility in Switzerland, while the cells will be manufactured at Leclanché’s Willstätt facility in Germany.

According to the companies, the first project to be jointly executed under their partnership will be Yara Birkeland, which is the world’s first autonomous and electric container vessel with zero emissions that was ordered by YARA. Expected to replace 40,000 truck journeys a year, Yara Birkeland will eliminate NOx and CO2 emissions. Additionally, the vessel is expected to improve road safety, while also reducing noise and dust emissions that trucks cause in a densely populated urban area.

The second project involves vessels known as Grimaldi Green 5th Generation (GG5G). Grimaldi is one of the world’s largest operators of Roll-on/ Roll-off (Ro-Ro) and Roll-on/ Roll-off Passenger (Ro-Pax) vessels.

Under this project, Kongsberg is expected to deliver a hybrid propulsion system that includes supply and integration of shaft generators, frequency drives, energy management systems together with Leclanché battery systems. The GG5Gs will be the first in a new series of hybrid Ro-Ro vessels using fossil fuel during navigation. Batteries will provide a “peak-shaving function and electricity in port.”