Offshore staff
BUSKERUD, Norway — EcoAdvisor is an outcome of a joint "Intelligent Efficiency" research project between Kongsberg Maritime, vessel operator DOF Subsea AS (DOF), Sintef, NORCE and Innovation Norway, with the aim of developing technologies to monitor and reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions during vessel operations.
EcoAdvisor monitors the vessel operation and its environment, including power generation, propulsion, environmental forces and control system dynamics. The technology enables operators to achieve reductions in fuel, emissions and maintenance costs, without compromising vessel redundancy margins or vessel operational efficiency. The tool also provides live advice on how ship owners can reduce their carbon footprint while at the same time reducing opex.
EcoAdvisor creates an intelligent and comprehensive overview of all these factors, delivering advice that enables efficient, cost-effective and sustainable solutions to be made without compromising vessel redundancy margin, Kongsberg said. Further, the history log and reporting functions in EcoAdvisor can be used to determine the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index, the Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator and Carbon Intensity Indicator to ensure compliance with the IMO.
The new technology works by collecting and analyzing real-time data from various systems onboard. These include dynamic positioning (DP), integrated automation systems, navigation and power management systems. These data are passed through a non-linear optimization solver to find the optimal setup of the power plant for the current environmental conditions, considering the demand from various consumers including thrusters, mission equipment and hotel loads. The optimal load reference for engines and state of charge reference for batteries is computed based on their efficiency and power loss.
Based on this analysis, operational advice is provided to the Captain, DP operator and chief engineer as to what machinery (engines, batteries and thrusters) can be stopped to run the vessel more efficiently and sustainably. This advice is dynamic—if a change in the mean weather conditions (e.g., wind, wave and current), power plant system or DP system settings is detected, EcoAdvisor’s recommendations will be revised accordingly, Kongsberg said. All advice is backed up by a system overview indicating why these changes are desirable, how any steps will alter the balance between efficiency and redundancy margin, and what the real-time effect of the measures are.
EcoAdvisor includes a Voyage Energy Calculator feature for transit operation. This helps the operator to determine the total energy consumption for varying speed profiles including added resistance due to wind, wave and current for selected routes based on the weather forecast. This allows operators to decide the optimal speed with minimum fuel energy consumption for a specific trip, according to their departure/arrival time requirements.
Utilizing EcoAdvisor’s features on the optimization of the use of generators, thrusters and the setup of the power plant, while maintaining and ensuring safety during DP operations, DOF currently has "Intelligent Efficiency" pilot schemes running on two vessels (Skandi Vega and Skandi Africa) and are expecting positive data from these.
08.30.2022
