A tool for improved energy efficiency
The VEEO display unit from TecnoVeritas
Portuguese company TecnoVeritas reports that it has developed a system that monitors energy use on board and its respective emissions, which the company says will result in environmentally-friendly ship operation.
The company believes that in the near future, shipping will be subject to a charge based on its carbon emissions. Energy use, fuel consumption and emissions are all related to efficiency, and TecnoVeritas expects that optimising energy efficiency will become a high priority in ship management. An onboard energy and emissions monitoring and optimisation system should becomes an invaluable tool in achieving the best compromise between existing and future requirements and rules, minimising human influence, and providing more accurate data.
According to TecnoVeritas, accurate measurements are essential if shipowners are to know how to make their vessels more energy efficient and thus reduce costs, both bunkering and any future emissions levies or taxes. Owners need to know how energy is used on board, and therefore what impact individual energy-saving actions will have on operational costs. Such information must be credible, which means it should be derived from the ship itself, over a suitably long period to give a true picture of the ship operation on the vessel’s typical trading route.
The TecnoVeritas solution to this requirement is known as VEEO - voyage energy & emissions optimiser. The company says that VEEO allows an accurate holistic approach to ship energy management; by implementing VEEO, ship owners will know where and how to optimise energy, making their ship operation environmentally friendly while saving money. VEEO satisfies the requirements of IMO MEPC.1/Circ684 of 17 of August 2009, and it is type approved by a major classification society.
TecnoVeritas has been working with Singapore ship operator APL/NOL and has installed 24 VEEO systems, one onboard each of 24 container vessels of up to 4,000TEU capacity, operating worldwide. The system comprises hardware, together with onboard and shore-based software for ship data analysis. VEEO, together with on-ship energy audits required with SEMPs, is intended to allow reliable ship operational data to be captured for further analysis and monitoring of ship energy performance. VEEO has been in service since March 2009.
VEEO acquires, treats and logs the main engine fuel consumption, propeller shaft energy transferred to the propeller, propeller thrust, hull resistance, power production from alternators, ship speed, nautical miles travelled, all different fuels in use, engine performance, boiler performance, incinerator emissions and weather condition. VEEO can additionally take care of fuel bunkering operations and fuel management. The continuous VEEO data display will allow the ship’s crew (once trained) to decide upon energy management actions, for example a change to the ship´s course or trim. Ship´s real time energy consumption and emissions including EEOI are displayed and logged.
Claimed benefits from VEEO are:
- Automatic measurement of ship energy, free from human error;
- Data export using Excel to indicate variables that allow ship managers to see the ship as a whole energy system; and
- Identification of energy efficiency degradation and fuel saving opportunities.
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