Greening Smaller Ferries by Optimizing Operations

A significant reduction in fuel can be achieved through operational changes, but to establish better practices, it is necessary to have equipment for evaluating the energy consumption under given circumstances and to be able to identify and evaluate energy-saving and cost-effective initiatives.
Many smaller ferry companies have no tradition for documenting operations or digital performance monitoring and analyse of their energy and fuel consumption. Therefore, the ferry crew, rely mainly on their assumptions about parameters influencing the operation, and how this impact the fuel consumption. The present study shows the results of an analyses of more than one year of logged data from operations of an older small island ferry. The preliminary results indicate that via digital decision support and effective decision support the ship can reduce the fuel consumption and the emissions with 10-20%.