Fuel is the shipping industry’s greatest costs, and any improvement on efficiency can have big consequences. Today, Finnish Eniram is launching a new product, Eniram OSA (Optimum Speed Assistant), which is set to save ships and liners a ton of money in fuel costs. Eniram OSA is able to accomplish this by matching real-time data about current sea conditions with historical information about a vessel’s performance to determine its optimal speed. The company expects this will save up to 3% a year in fuel costs, while still getting the vessel to port just in time.
There are other similar products serving the maritime industry, but all other speed optimizing systems use static historical models, or base their analyses solely on prevailing conditions, Eniram OSA is the first system to draw on real empirical data about vessel performance. Its database comports 200 billion signals collected and analysed from over 50,000 sea days from 100 vessels.
Calculations are served up to the crew via an easy-to-use dashboard and color-coded ‘traffic light’ system. This coordinates all of the information in one place, in a form that can be readily interpreted without the need for any manual input
Ultimately, Eniram expects the tool to lead to a change in behavior among ships’ crews in the way they use a ship’s engines, Eniram CTO Henrik Dahl adds. “It is not enough simply to optimize the engine loads for each engine, as the ship ends up consuming more energy. Obtaining the best efficiency on a passenger vessel usually means operating at constant speed and using the engines at less optimal loads than those for which they are designed.” Eniram will release an Engine Optimization product towards the end of this year.
