WinGD to broaden energy efficiency and system integration advisory offering

WinGD’s hybridisation programme has continued to advance since the last interview with The Motorship, Stefan Goranov begins. The first reference for WinGD’s battery-hybrid solution, the first PCTC in a series for NYK Line, will be delivered from the shipyard in December. “The components have been successfully shipped and our in-house development work is on track”.

Commercial confidentiality prevents Goranov from discussing the order book, but “we have been selected for a number of other projects.”

Goranov is equally upbeat about WinGD’s recent collaborations: The Motorship reported on a highly intriguing joint development project with NYK’s research institute, the Monohakobi Technology Institute Co., Ltd (MTI) and ABS in December 2021.

The project aims to bring together MTI’s integrated model of hull hydrodynamics and propeller with energy system components models from WinGD. Goranov expanded on the digital twin project’s implications. “This is an important step for us, because on a long term, what we are aiming for is dynamic performance optimisations.” In other words, WinGD is aiming to offer individually-tailored control strategies, adapting them to cargo capacity utilisation, particularly for container vessels with reefer containers, speed demand, as well as improving the overall efficiency of the ship as an integrated system.

Goranov stressed that the two-year research project was key to gaining a better understanding of the vessel’s hydrodynamics. “It is important that we can see how the energy system is reacting on changing hull and propeller characteristics, such as ageing and fouling.” The research project will also incorporate data from real vessels, provided by NYK, as the project aims to gain a deeper understanding of the vessel’s real-world sea-keeping performance in different conditions. This will contribute to the definition of a set of control strategies to keep the system efficiency as high as possible.

In fact, Goranov expects the integrated digital twin model to be able to benchmark actual operational performance with the theoretically most efficient mode of operation at a time.

“We will be able to collect the operational data from a vessel, analyse it through the digital twin, which will suggest where we can see the delta between the reference and actual operation. Then, actions that can improve the performance will be suggested.”

At the moment, WinGD is accumulating operational data in order to refine its algorithms, but Goranov expects the service will be commercially launched within the next couple of years.

The expected launch of WinGD’s as yet unnamed vessel efficiency optimisation solution draws on the company’s unparalleled understanding of the actual machinery on the vessel itself – there are only two of us with this degree of insight, Goranov says laughing – as well as the company’s holistic view of the vessel.

The holistic view of the vessel was originally developed as part of the battery-hybrid research programme that Goranov spearheaded in 2019.

The model itself has been used to suggest alternatives to customers who approached WinGD for advice before finalising the specifications of a newbuilding with a shipyard.

New Sustainability Unit

The insights go beyond identifying plausible values for energy efficiency improvements, and their costs, and look ahead to the regulatory picture, and Carbon Intensity Indicator values. “So we have restructured the organisation slightly to establish a sustainability solutions unit, which I’m leading,” Goranov says. “Every project will be configured to the specific requirements of individual customers.”

This consultancy type approach will not be restricted to larger customers – “they already know about the value of our services” – but rather opened up to smaller and medium sized customers, many of whom do not have their own in-house teams of analysts, and are likely to be asking themselves which way they should go to keep their vessels economically viable and profitable.

Looking ahead, WinGD is now exploring how to introduce thermal aspects into the full-system simulation platform. The original hybridisation platform required the model to identify an optimal point from a system-wide perspective, taking into account the main engine, auxiliary engines and other energy converters and consumers, but extending the scope of the platform would “allow us to quantify the benefits and the trade-offs behind the thermal characteristics of the system.”

However, implementing such thermal management strategies would require changes to the network control “and that will require solving more complex optimisation problem,” Goranov says. One of the current research objectives is the evaluation of the benefits that Model Predictive Control brings relative to the “conventional” rule based. If proven beneficial, our control software can be updated on new builds and vessel in service.