Rolls-Royce and Inmarsat in LOI on energy management system

Ronald Spithout, President of Inmarsat Maritime and Mikael Makinen, President, Marine, Rolls-Royce

SEPTEMBER 21, 2017 — Satellite communications provider Inmarsat and Rolls-Royce have signed a Letter of Intent to make the Rolls-Royce Energy Management system optionally available via Inmarsat Maritime’s Fleet Xpress high speed broadband service, to reduce energy consumption and support environmental compliance.

With data collected from a range of ship control systems and equipment sensors, Energy Management 2.0 also benchmarks efficiency against historical performance.

“Monitoring ship fuel consumption and emissions is required by law in some areas and is also increasingly used in vessel selection criteria by charterers,” says Marco Camporeale, Rolls-Royce, Vice President, Intelligent Asset Management Solutions. “Our Energy Management software quantifies the effects of optimizing operational efficiency on costs and the true impact of enhancements as they are phased in. Fleet Xpress always-on connectivity and the potential for application-triggered bandwidth mean that data can be logged in real time, optimizing the verifiable reporting capability already built in to Rolls-Royce Energy Management System software.”

Vessels equipped with Rolls-Royce Energy Management software can operate within the Inmarsat Certified Application Provider program (CAP), connected via Fleet Xpress and hosted on the Inmarsat Gateway platform; and then be able to maximize their efficiency in a way that is constantly verifiable and compliant with EU Monitoring Reporting and Verification requirements and the IMO Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan.

Fleet Xpress seamlessly combines the power of Inmarsat’s Global Xpress network high speed, mobile and globally available broadband service with its ultra-reliable L-band network by means of the Inmarsat Gateway. The Inmarsat Gateway,provides application-triggered bandwidth, a managed-cyber security solution and flexible third-party subscriptions on board Fleet Xpress vessels.

“The CAP program allows third parties to work with Inmarsat to develop content-rich applications to populate the digital maritime world enabled by Fleet Xpress,” says Stein A. Orø, Vice President Sales, Inmarsat Maritime. “The combined Rolls-Royce and Inmarsat technological capabilities will deliver proven energy management software to shipowners with always-on connectivity.”

Application-triggered bandwidth usage allows end-users to choose whether to dedicate part of their bandwidth allocation to specific vessel efficiency measures, or for the app itself to trigger bandwidth ‘dynamically’ by the hour.

“In the case of Rolls-Royce,” says Orø, “the LOI envisages remote monitoring to document environmental compliance, but new digital services can also be delivered to the maritime industry that create efficiencies for users and new revenue streams for vendors. Application-triggered bandwidth pricing means this can be completely transparent.”

The arrangement could provide a template for other vendors seeking to exploit the potential of Fleet Xpress, which has already attracted commitment from over 10,000 commercial ships since its launch last year.

“This is a milestone arrangement for Inmarsat,” said Orø,  “demonstrating that the true innovators in maritime technology recognize Fleet Xpress as enabling their own strategies for digitalization.” 

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