Ship Energy Efficiency, Alternative Fuels and Marine Renewable Energy
Technical Bulletin 2016

This section presents papers on subjects including the use of alternative fuels for environmental compliance, the use of hull optimization to reduce the carbon footprint of ships, and the assessment and optimization of emerging marine renewable energies – in particular tidal turbines.

Hull optimization enables fuel consumption and harmful emissions to be reduced. This optimization can be achieved either through traditional methods such as test tank modeling, or through CFD calculations. The second paper explains how different hull shapes combined with different cargo tank configurations would lead to a significant increase in energy efficiency for a new LNG carrier design.

The use of alternative fuels such as methane, methanol and ethane is driven by environmental regulation and the need to find a better economic model in the long term. The third paper explains how this was made possible on board existing Evergas LEG carriers, thanks to in-depth analysis of internal combustion DF engines and consideration of the storage of LEG in dedicated type C tanks.

Tidal turbines are emerging marine renewable energy (MRE) technologies offering great potential for harnessing this renewable and predictable oceanic resource. However, exploitation at sea comes with significant design, installation, grid connection, and maintenance challenges; guidelines and standards are required to ensure safety, quality and performance, and to accelerate tidal turbine development and commercialisation. Standardisation is also necessary to support and improve safety and confidence of a wide range of MRE stakeholders, such as designers, project operators, investors, insurers or final users. In the absence of international standards, which are under development, Bureau Veritas has developed a certification methodology for the design assessment of current and tidal turbines, and this is the subject of the fourth paper. The methodology is presented in the context of the French tidal turbine project, Sabella D10, within which it was developed. It has been published in the Bureau Veritas Guidance Note “NI603 Current and Tidal Turbines”, updated in May 2015.  

A significant challenge for marine renewable energies is the optimization of maintenance strategies and the reduction of related operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, and this is the subject of the penultimate paper. Selecting an appropriate maintenance approach can be particularly difficult for multiple devices at sea, such as MRE arrays or MRE platforms combining distinct devices; the paper presents a methodology that encompasses economic assessment with reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) assessment.

The final paper of the section revisits the Sabella D10 project, and presents research carried out to test the application to the project of the IEC standard, “IEC62600-200 Electricity Producing Tidal Energy Converter - Power Performance Assessment”. 

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