Wasaline greenlights largest marine battery retrofit project to date

The project will see Andorra-headquartered AYK Energy install a 10.4-MWh battery on Aurora Botnia, which operates a daily service between Finland and Sweden. 

Built in 2021, Aurora Botnia presently operates on dual-fuel LNG/biomass engines and 2.2-MWh batteries. The upgrade – to a battery system nearly five times more powerful – is expected to slash fossil energy use by around 10,000 MWh annually, cutting emissions by nearly a quarter each year.

AYK founder Chris Kruger confirmed the new AYK Pisces+ battery system will exceed the previous biggest retrofit, on the Aida Prima cruise ship, by about 500 kWh.

Mr Kruger said, “The transition to electric and hybrid vessels is accelerating, and the AYK/Wasaline partnership is an excellent example of how working together strategically can make the change happen.”

Mr Kruger said the system is scheduled to be delivered and installed by the end of 2025 at Turku Repair Yard in Finland, enabling Aurora Botnia to be operational again by January 2026. He said the batteries are lithium iron phosphate (LFP), known for their safety and long lifespan compared to the more volatile nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries.

“AYK’s battery systems are built around safety,” he said. “We are one of the few manufacturers to exclusively use LFP and have developed a system where the LFP chemistry is safer and has comparable energy density to NMC.”

From the initial planning of Wasaline’s Aurora Botnia, the shipping line set the target of achieving fully carbon-neutral operations by 2030. Since Aurora Botnia began operations, Wasaline has cut carbon dioxide emissions by 35%, and since 2013, the company has cut carbon dioxide emissions by 70% per voyage.

Wasaline managing director Peter Ståhlberg said, “We are continuously working to establish the Vaasa–Umeå route as a green shipping corridor. There’s growing demand for environmentally friendly transport in Europe. This means the entire transport chain can be carbon-neutral today. Expanding our battery capacity with AYK Energy is a major step that allows us to make our vessel even more sustainable. Our collaboration with Finland’s and the region’s energy clusters makes innovative solutions like this possible.”

The AYK battery systems will be built at AYK’s 5,000 m² automated manufacturing plant in in Zhuhai, China which opened in 2023. The plant has a production capacity of 300 MWh a year with the ability to expand to 1 GWh.

AYK this year successfully installed the biggest marine battery systems ever built, two 12 MWh Orion+ batteries for Brittany Ferries hybrid-electric vessels Guillaume de Normandie and sister ship Saint-Malo. The vessels were built at China Merchants Jinling Shipyard Weihai.