It’s Good News Monday!
This Monday we talk about:
Boskalis to Install Power Packs on Offshore Energy Branch Vessels
How much fuel and carbon can voyage optimization save?
gCaptain Proudly Supports The Blue Water Scholarship Fund
The Icebreaker That Found The Endurance Is Vital For Climate Science
“Bokalift 2 illustration - Image Credit - Wärtsilä (File image)”. Image from Offshore Engineer.
Boskalis is retrofitting vessels in its Offshore Energy division with Energy Storage Systems. The systems can reduce energy consumption and emissions by as much as 20%, as well as providing power while the vessels are docked. “Boskalis said the modifications would take two years to complete and will cover crane vessels Bokalift 1 and Bokalift 2, two construction support vessels and two diving support vessels, all of which have dynamic position DP2 capabilities.” Bosklais is already using software biofuels to reduce carbon intensity of its ships, and is also part of a consortium working to accelerate the use of methanol as a shipping fuel with the goal of reaching climate neutrality.
“Voyage optimization with NAPA Fleet Intelligence”. Image from Marine Log.
“With IMO’s EEXI and CII requirements putting the pressure on shipowners to reduce carbon emissions, Finnish-based software specialist NAPA and ClassNK are working with Japanese trading house Marubeni on a major fleet-wide study.” The study will examine how voyage optimization impacts fuel savings by analyzing EEXI (Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index) impacts using actual vessels. NAPA’s cloud Fleet Intelligence Platform has years of data and can be used without additional hardware on board vessels.
*Reducing emissions continues to be a big concern for the offshore industry with software, design, and testing all viable methods for improving efficiency. OneStep Power operates in this area, testing for fault ride through in closed bus operations, allowing increases in efficiency of up to 16%.
Video from the Blue Water Scholarship Fund on YouTube.
The Blue Water Scholarship fund was founded in 2017 to provide financial scholarships between $1,000-$10,000 to US Merchant Mariners in the United States. It also provides emergency assistance to cadets. John Konrad, founder of gCaptain, has supported the fund through gCaptain from early on, helping those students who struggled as he did while attending the United States Naval Academy. We highly recommend checking out the video above and reading more about John’s story in the original article on Captain.
“The SA Agulhas amid the ice of Antarctica. © Raquel Flynn”. Image from gCaptain.
Sir Ernest Shackleton set sail on the Endurance in 1914 to the Antarctic. The ship was trapped in ice, crushed, and sank in 1915 with the crew surviving in smaller boats. Under 3000 meters of water, no one was sure if it would be found until the South African vessel SA Agulhas II discovered it in March 2022. The ship has taken five winter voyages from Cape Town to the Antarctic sea ice and is making South Africa a leader in Antarctic science. Expeditions like this have helped to understand the Southern Ocean and carbon cycling. Hundreds of students have also been on board for SEAmester, a ship-based program for postgraduate students to get hands-on experience. SA Agulhas II is a Polar Class 5 vessel that is a research and supply ship for South Africa’s research bases. It contains eight labs with room for six shipping containerized labs, a moonpool, and infrastructure for people and equipment to deploy into the water.
Smile, it’s Good News Monday! :-)