Providing successful service with a small offshore vessel
Even the most fuel-efficient offshore vessel cannot do without fuel. Ships that use the electricity from the wind farm they service (the “maritime charging station”) are in the planning stage but not yet available.
The consumption of a diesel engine is linked to easily calculable laws. Depending on the type and age of the engine, 190 to 220 grams of diesel fuel are consumed per kilowatt hour. In recent years, many optimizations have been made to the units, which have led to significant fuel savings, especially in the case of high-speed and medium-speed diesels. But at some point, the end of the possibilities has been reached here too. The carbon content of the fuel is released back into the environment as carbon dioxide, soot and in other forms. Reducing this in an engine is not possible, the laws of physics do not allow it.
A typical utility vessel like the widely used UT-755 usually needs around 15 tons of diesel fuel per day in cruise. It is a lot of steel that is moved through the water in the process with a displacement of about 4,500 tons. Modern OSVs in a wind farm are not much smaller and hardly have weaker propulsion systems. However, they tend to tread water and require somewhat less energy input. But mass remains mass. If you want to use less energy, you must act at this point.
But in offshore shipping, these ship sizes are often not needed at all to transport a few technicians, divers or ROV pilots with their equipment to the scene. A much smaller ship can also do this very well and does not need thousands of kilowatts of power and high investments for its construction.
Accordingly, many savings become possible: fuel expenses, charter rates and personnel costs are reduced accordingly. Climate protection is helped by low CO2 emissions. The new catamaran “CC-ONE” can offer all of this through its overall concept and compactness, without leaving anything to be desired in terms of service. Size alone does not count. You wouldn’t drive a heavy truck to a small construction site on land either.