Why Nautilus?
In 2020, Nautilus was approached by an LNG client seeking a solution to reduce fuel and maintenance spending as well as emissions. Leveraging insights from Nautilus Platform, the client increased total plant fuel efficiency and reduced engine hours with a sophisticated solution that automatically determines the most efficient configuration of online generators required for a given real-time power demand. Generator Optimization is only possible using high frequency data for a real-time understanding of a vessel’s power demand and output. Traditional noon reports that output average daily values for power fail to capture the true operational profile of the vessel and give actionable insights.
By the numbers:
- 15% reduced engine hours
- $337k saved in fuel spending
- $375k saved in maintenance spending
- 200MT monthly CO2 savings
200MT monthly CO2 savings
While working with one of our LNG clients, Nautilus surfaced the most efficient configuration of online generators required for each vessel’s power demand. Through these vessel-specific insights, the client was able to increase total plant fuel efficiency and reduce engine hours fleet-wide.
Following Nautilus’s analysis of their generator plant configuration, our client was able to increase their optimal run-time across 4 vessels to by 77% compared to the previous year. This change in plant efficiency produced a net savings of over 70 MT/month of HFO equivalent — cutting total fleet fuel consumption by ~1%. This corresponds with a CO2 emissions reduction of 200MT per month. To bring that number into perspective, one month of reduced consumption is equivalent to taking 43 cars off the road per year. These reductions over the course of a year, generated by an entire fleet are massive. A fleet of 40 LNG vessels could therefore save almost 24,000MT of CO2 annually — which would require over 400,000 mature trees1 to get to net zero in the same time period.
Nautilus’s Generator Optimization
Minimizing vessel inefficiency does not require specialized energy-efficient power plants onboard. Rather, true emissions reduction and increased efficiency simply requires improved operations of these plants. Unfortunately, quantifying and tracking the operational efficiency of onboard generator plants has traditionally been done using limited manual noon data — the reporting standard in shipping for decades. Although these snapshots have provided once-a-day observations, they have never taken into account and tracked the real-time power demands and associated observed generator configurations needed for actionable generator plant optimization.
With high frequency power demand and generator data, Nautilus Labs offers optimization of any shipboard generator plant. Generator optimization increases total plant fuel efficiency and reduces engine hours by determining the most efficient configuration of online generators required for a given power demand—the real-time power, not an average noon report value that fails to capture the true operational profile of the vessel. By operating in Nautilus’s recommended optimal configuration and being alerted by the Platform when a plant is misconfigured, operators realize significant increases of overall plant fuel efficiency which results in reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, while increasing the duration between required engine overhauls to minimize maintenance spending.
1 United States Environmental Protection Agency, March 9, 2021, https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references
