A major factor slowing down the more widespread use of plug-in shore power to permit cold ironing is the lack of a safe, troublesome and easy to use standard for the shore to ship connector. Further complicating the problem is the abundance of different voltage and frequency systems found on ships of different nations. At the SMM exhibition in Hamburg last week a step closer to solving this problems was exhibited by the French company New Generation, Natural Gas abbreviated to NG2. The PLUG (Power Generation during Loading and Unloading) is a semi automatic system requiring only one sailor to operate it and to connect to the shore: no shore personnel is required.. [More]