TecnoVeritas, a 20-year-old Portuguese marine engineering company, specialized on energy and propulsion, was invited by STX shipyards – Saint Nazaire, France (the builders of “Oasis”, Class Ships, the nowadays bigger cruise ships at sea)  to study and present a proposal for the development of a data acquisition and performance monitoring system based on the VEEO technology (Voyage Energy & Emissions Optimiser). VEEO was the winner of the famous international prize SEA TRADE AWARD for Clean Shipping, in London, 2012.

 

The main goal of VEEO system is to optimize the energy consumption and minimize emissions made during the ship’s operation, but also to predict the energy consumptions. Based on mathematical algorithms, VEEO will predict the needs of electric energy, air conditioning and fresh water, optimize the trim, and measure in real time the structural stresses of the mighty ship’s hull.

 

VEEO will allow monitoring the ship’s long-term performance, to any geographic area in which the ship may be operating in the future, so that it would be possible to predict and optimize the energy consumption of the voyage but also tackle any ship energy converting problem that may be under development, or simply to program, hull cleaning and propeller polishing . Meteorological conditions, sea water temperature, number of passengers and other external variables will be accounted for by the system to produce reliable predictions.

 

Portuguese Technology Competing to Optimize the Performance

 

Figure 1 – Portuguese Technology Competing to Optimize the Performance