Sustainability
“I really like this opportunity! We can see some actual push in digitalization with the support of this project,” says Ruihua Lu, Ship Efficiency Expert & Project Leader at Fleet Operations Digital, Stena Line.
The purpose of the EU-funded Twin Ship Horizon Europe Project is to bring together different actors in the shipping industry to collaborate on an open-source digital platform. This platform will be fed with data and enhanced through AI and advanced machine learning. Within the platform, digital twins or virtual models of ships will be created. Using both collected measurements and theoretical calculations, the models make it possible to simulate scenarios, evaluate the effects of new technologies, and support operational decision-making to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.
Stena Line and Stena Teknik are jointly participating in the project to leverage each other’s experience, expertise, and measurement data, and to bring back as much knowledge as possible to the Stena sphere. The project has been running for one year and will continue for another two.
Nicolas Bathfield, Project Manager at Stena Teknik, explains that the Twin Ship Project consists of two main parts:
Modelling and simulation
- Building digital twins that can be used to analyse, for example, fuel savings from different measures on the vessel.
- Providing the ability to test hypothetical scenarios for vessel improvements, such as installing sails or converting to methanol engines.
Operational decision support
- Developing a system that helps vessel operations make better decisions regarding routing, speed, and trim.
- Integrating weather data and onboard measurements to optimise fuel consumption.
In addition to enhanced capabilities for analysing data and supporting the transition to more sustainable shipping, Nicolas highlights the importance of standardising signal names and data formats across the organisation.
“The most exciting part of the project is that it accelerates our digitalisation and forces us to organise the data we already collect and make it accessible across the entire organisation,” Nicolas notes.
Ruihua Lu, who has extensive experience participating in EU-funded projects, initiated Stena’s involvement in the Twin Ship Project. He is enthusiastic about the many opportunities it provides.
“This project is quite beneficial for our decarbonization roadmap. We can simulate different options for each specific ship to predict ship performance more accurately.”
“With the support of this project, Stena Line and Stena Teknik are more closely related and we collaborate in depth… it’s real collaboration now,” he adds.