Port of Entry for Electrification

Photo credit: Katie Chizhevskaya – stock.adobe.com

How an EPRI study is accelerating emissions reductions at the Port of Los Angeles

By Chris Warren

Comfort with big numbers is helpful to understand the frenetic pace of daily activity at the Port of Los Angeles (POLA). Encompassing 7,500 acres and 43 miles of waterfront, POLA handled 8.6 million 20-foot intermodal shipping containers in 2023, including over 550,000 loaded with furniture, 300,000-plus with auto parts, and more than 250,000 carrying apparel from trade partners ranging from China and Japan to India, Germany, South Africa, and Australia.

2023 was no anomaly. The Port of Los Angeles has been the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere for nearly a quarter century. Its sprawling activities connect POLA to one in nine jobs across Southern California and almost three million jobs nationally. In total, POLA’s 25 cargo terminals processed nearly $300 billion in cargo value in 2023.

The sheer volume of activity isn’t the only suitable metric to describe POLA’s ambition. More recently, the Port of Los Angeles has embraced a leadership role in exploring and deploying solutions to significantly reduce both greenhouse gas emissions as well as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and particulate matter that are associated with air quality issues for port workers and neighboring communities.

POLA’s ambition to decarbonize and improve air quality is partly driven by state and local policies and regulations. For example, in 2021, the Los Angeles City Council adopted the “Zero Emissions Ports by 2030” resolution, which calls for creating zero-emission shipping corridors across trade routes and for all ships that dock at the Port of Los Angeles to be zero emissions by 2030. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted a rule designed to limit a range of emissions from ships docked at the state’s ports and terminals. California aims to slash economywide greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent by 2045.

“The Port of Los Angeles has a long history of environmental stewardship,” said Sal Zambrano, Harbor Engineer and Chief of Design at the Port of Los Angeles. “We’ve been at the forefront of maritime decarbonization efforts through our Clean Air Action Plan. Along with our governor and mayor, we’ve set ambitious goals and we’re working hard to achieve them.” In pushing towards dramatic emissions reductions, POLA also can establish a blueprint for America’s other 360 river and ocean ports to follow.

“California is always the tip of the spear; we are slaying the dragon first,” Zambrano said. “If we can demonstrate that we can make it work and that it’s a viable solution, then others will jump in because they will know it’s a cost-effective solution the industry can embrace.”

A Focus on Electrification of Cargo-Handling Equipment (CHE)

Electrification is central to POLA’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. Since the 1970s, many ports around the country have converted the large ship-to-shore cranes used to load and unload cargo from diesel to electric power from the grid. While cranes use a lot of electricity, many pieces of cargo-handling equipment (CHE) have yet to be electrified—offering an avenue to reduce emissions and air pollutants.

There are nearly 2,000 pieces of CHE at the Port of Los Angeles. The equipment fleet includes everything from terminal tractors and forklifts to non-road vehicles, empty container handlers, and rubber-tired gantry cranes. Clearly, any significant move to electrify CHE at POLA can only be accomplished if sufficient grid capacity is in place, which is why POLA has been working with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) for years to better understand and plan for future load demands and overcome electrification challenges.

“We are interested in understanding what it’s going to take to serve that load and what constraints exist from a grid perspective that need to be addressed with upgrades,” said Yamen Nanne, Power Engineering Manager at LADWP. Initially, that assessment was done in-house, but there was a recognition that the staff resources and expertise required to collect data about the load demands of a wide range of CHE and assess solutions to manage peak demand were significant enough that external support was needed.

As a result, LADWP and POLA jointly funded research and analysis conducted by EPRI. The result was the technical report, Zero-Emission Planning and Grid Assessment for the Port of Los Angeles, released last year. The comprehensive assessment was supported by contributions from both the LADWP and POLA, along with six of POLA’s container terminal operators—who, after all, will be making investments in electrified CHE and need confidence that sufficient grid capacity will be available to keep new equipment charged.

EPRI’s engagement was unique because it included input and analysis from four EPRI research programs: electrification (Program 199), distribution operations and planning (Program 200), energy storage (Program 94), and electric transportation (Program 18). The report also provides a 13-year electrification roadmap with specific steps and recommendations for reducing and eventually eliminating CHE emissions. “It started as a simple project, but based on our discussions with them, we realized that a lot of things needed to be done,” said Baskar Vairamohan, an EPRI Program Manager who oversaw the project. “EPRI’s expertise in off-road electric vehicle, energy storage, and grid forecasting and planning was uniquely suited to all the analysis and modeling this required.”

The value of an outside perspective was important in helping both LADWP and POLA clarify potential next steps. “We really needed to bring in subject matter experts to catalog all the equipment and understand what it’s going to take to power that equipment once it’s electrified,” Nanne said. “Once we have that information detailed and outlined, then we can do the load flow analysis that informs us what upgrades are needed on the distribution system and upstream at the substation level to accommodate all that load growth.”

The rationale for a comprehensive study was straightforward. Electrification is a powerful tool for reaching zero-emission targets. However, building out the grid infrastructure necessary to serve high demand requires time and significant investments. Ensuring grid upgrades are sufficient to meet demand without overbuilding can only be accomplished with robust data and modeling. “We didn’t want to build too little and be stuck not being able to accommodate zero emissions,” said Chris Brown, Chief Harbor Engineer at the Port of Los Angeles. “And no one wanted to have stranded assets where we built too much, and it turned out that was unnecessary. The EPRI report was key in getting us to that no-regret point.”

Unprecedented Collaboration

Arriving at these and other study findings required collaboration between LADWP and POLA and myriad analyses from EPRI. One role that EPRI’s analysis and participation played was to begin filling information gaps about POLA’s future loads and the steps LADWP would need to take to meet them.

“When we first started some of these discussions with POLA, there were a lot of unknowns. The methodologies that EPRI used to help us quantify the cargo handling equipment provided some perspective on how we can break down that customer need and meet that load,” said Peter Liang, a member of LADWP’s Distribution System Development Team. “It also gives us ideas about how we can better optimize our system to manage some of the electrification demands through charging or through incentivizing certain shifts in operation.”

Providing helpful insights demanded a methodical and nuanced research and modeling approach. For example, to assess the emissions reduction potential of electrifying CHE, EPRI, LADWP, and POLA first had to quantify the emissions of the existing fleet of container handling equipment. This was aided by POLA’s Annual Inventory of Air Emissions report, which had to be augmented with granular, equipment-level data. “It can be very complicated if you have a piece of equipment purchased in the 1980s versus a piece of equipment purchased in 2011,” said Brandon Johnson, an EPRI Technical Leader. “There are very different emissions standards on equipment from the 1980s compared to equipment from ten years ago.”

The work involved in developing the study provided a good baseline of cooperation between EPRI, POLA, the container terminal operators, and LADWP. As part of the study’s development, EPRI conducted site visits and interviews with six container terminal operators. The insights gathered can help LADWP understand the container terminal operator’s unique electricity demands. “With this study, we were able to dive much deeper into how the cargo handling equipment would be used,” Liang said. “That opens up opportunities to help our stakeholders and our management understand the underlying strategies of how we can promote more electrification and how things like managed charging can help ensure any grid infrastructure provided to POLA is efficient and cost-effective.”

The improved understanding of the role managed charging can play in promoting efficient electrification at POLA was the result of analysis EPRI’s Miles Evans contributed to the study. “That involved developing a model of how the operators of the equipment will do their job with the equipment and when they will operate,” said Evans, who is an EPRI Senior Team Lead for Energy Storage Analysis. “It also involved understanding how the equipment can be charged and what leeway exists for managing that charging.”

Translating Knowledge into Action

The rationale for the exhaustive study was never to gather abstract insights; it was to spur real action. “We don’t want this report to sit on the shelf or the Internet,” Zambrano said.

It’s not. The findings from the report are being used to inform elected officials who make regulatory and budget decisions. For example, the Los Angeles City Council recently passed a motion requesting a report on what would be necessary from a power supply perspective to help the port increase electrification. “The EPRI study is an input to that report that we’re going to be providing to the council,” LADWP’s Nanne said. “It’s helping to keep priority on the project and giving our city council the information they need to push this forward.”

Zambrano says the environmental assessment process for necessary grid infrastructure upgrades will begin soon, followed by initial design work. “The main project elements are already outlined in the report. We’re expanding the receiving station, and we have to supply property for that expansion, which we are working on,” Zambrano said. “Then we need to extend distribution lines to all the major container terminals and find a location where a network station will be located within each terminal.” Like the report itself, all the work demands a high level of collaboration between LADWP, POLA, and the container terminal operators.

For his part, Zambrano is clear-eyed about all the work that needs to happen to help POLA meet its emissions reduction goals through greater electrification without overbuilding infrastructure. “It’s going to be an ongoing process,” Zambrano said. “But we’re all committed to it, and I think that’s one of the many beneficial results of the report.”

Within EPRI, the report also provides a blueprint for how disparate research disciplines can come together to complement one another and produce insights that have immediate and tangible value. “This report is the epitome of how various programs within EPRI come together and bring multi-faceted research and modeling skills to solve a complex problem that has immediately realizable real-world benefits” Vairamohan said.

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