Shipboard Energy Conservation and Fuel Management Decision Tools

In order to meet reduced manning and cost goals, existing and future Navy ships are utilizing sensors and other automated technologies to monitor equipment health and provide accurate information to end users. Onboard future surface ships, it is envisioned that operations and maintenance planning will be automated and operations and maintenance procedures will be delivered to the operators and technicians in an electronic format on interactive media. As the Navy experiences an escalation in fuel prices (Since September FY 04 the Navy fuel price increased 203% from $35.28 to $106 per barrel), the need to develop and integrate energy conservation analysis tools and fuel management capabilities is of critical importance to ensuring mission readiness and effectiveness. Currently, ships perform rudimentary fuel consumption calculations by manually collecting information and generating their own fuel curves. This is a time and resource intensive process that requires specially trained ship’s force to be able to collect the necessary data while the ship operates at different speeds, analyze it and create fuel curves. This method does clearly articulate or anticipate impacting operational variables such as load displacement, engine condition, sea-state, weather, etc.