Energy efficiency of inland ships is significantly influenced by navigational environment, including wind speed and direction as well as water depth and speed. The complexity of the inland navigational environment makes it rather difficult to determine the optimal speeds under different environmental conditions to achieve the best energy efficiency. Route division according to the characteristics of these environmental factors could provide a good solution for the optimization of ship engine speed under different navigational environments. In this paper, the distributed parallel k-means clustering algorithm is adopted to achieve an elaborate route division by analyzing the corresponding environmental factors based on a self-developed big data analytics platform. Subsequently, a ship energy efficiency optimization model considering multiple environmental factors is established through analyzing the energy transfer among hull, propeller and main engine. Then, decisions are made concerning the optimal engine speeds in different segments along the path. Finally, a case study on the Yangtze River is performed to validate the present optimization method. The results show that the proposed method can effectively reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions of ships.@en

Ship energy consumption and emission prediction are critical for ship energy efficiency management and pollution gas emission control, both of which are major concerns for the shipping industry and hence continue to attract global attention and research interest. This article examined the energy efficiency data sources, big data analysis for energy efficiency, and analyzed the ship energy consumption and emission prediction models. The ship energy consumption and pollution gas emission prediction models are comprehensively summarized based on the modeling method and principles. The theoretical analysis and artificial intelligence-based ship energy consumption model, as well as the top-down and bottom-up ship emission prediction models, are thoroughly examined in terms of influencing factors, model accuracy, data sources, and practical applications. On this basis, the challenges of ship energy consumption and emission prediction are discussed, and future research suggestions are proposed, providing a foundation for the development of ship energy consumption and emission prediction technologies. The analysis results show that the principles, parameters of concern, and data quality all have a significant impact on the performance of the prediction models. Consequently, the prediction model's accuracy can be improved by combining intelligent algorithms and machine learning. In the future, high precision, self-adapting, ship fuel consumption and emission prediction models based on artificial intelligence technology should be further studied, in order to improve their prediction performance, and thus providing solid foundations for the optimization management and control of the ship energy consumption and emissions.@en

The optimization of ship energy consumption is attracting a great deal of attention, as societies seek to save energy and reduce emissions. Shipping companies are more concerned with the energy consumption of a ship fleet, as opposed to that of a single ship. Because the energy consumption of a fleet is influenced by multiple factors including environmental factors, port operations and transport demands, an improvement in a single ship's energy consumption does not necessarily mean that the overall energy consumption of a fleet is good. In addition, those factors are usually varying over time, making it hard to optimize the fleet's energy consumption by methods that do not consider these time-varying factors. Therefore, a bi-level distributed dynamic optimization method based on distributed model predictive control is proposed. Moreover, an upper-level optimization model for fleet operational decision-making and a lower-level dynamic optimization model of fleet energy consumption are established. Based on these, a control algorithm for the dynamic optimization of fleet energy consumption is developed. Finally, a case study is carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. It can further reduce the energy consumption of each ship by at least 1.1% and about 6.8% for the whole fleet.@en

Energy saving and emission reduction have attracted a great deal of attention in the maritime industry. The optimization of a ship's energy efficiency can reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions effectively. However, most of the available studies only focus on either the sailing speed or route optimization, and the interaction between speed and route under the influence of multiple environmental factors was not accounted properly. In this paper, a novel joint optimization method of the sailing route and speed, which considers the interaction between route and speed as well as multiple environmental factors, is proposed to fully exploit the energy efficiency's potential. Moreover, a joint optimization model of the sailing route and speed, which is based on an energy consumption model that considers multiple environmental factors, is established. Next, a solution algorithm for the joint optimization model is investigated in order to achieve joint decision-making with regard to the sailing route and speed. Finally, a case study is conducted that demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can achieve the optimal sailing route and speed under complex environmental conditions, as well as a reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of about 4%.@en

Nowadays, optimization of ship energy efficiency attracts increasing attention in order to meet the requirement for energy conservation and emission reduction. Ship operation energy efficiency is significantly influenced by environmental factors such as wind speed and direction, water speed and depth. Owing to inherent time-variety and uncertainty associated with these various factors, it is very difficult to determine optimal sailing speeds accurately for different legs of the whole route using traditional static optimization methods, especially when the weather conditions change frequently over the length of a ship route. Therefore, in this paper, a novel dynamic optimization method adopting the model predictive control (MPC) strategy is proposed to optimize ship energy efficiency accounting for these time-varying environmental factors. Firstly, the dynamic optimization model of ship energy efficiency considering time-varying environmental factors and the nonlinear system model of ship energy efficiency are established. On this basis, the control algorithm and controller for the dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency (DOSEE) are designed. Finally, a case study is carried out to demonstrate the validity of this optimization method. The results indicate that the optimal sailing speeds at different time steps could be determined through the dynamic optimization method. This method can improve ship energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions effectively.@en

In the case of the global energy crisis and the higher sound of energy saving and emission reduction, how to take effective management measures of ship energy efficiency to achieve the goal of energy saving and emission reduction, put forward a new challenge for the development of shipping technology. The application of big data technology provides a new idea for the research of ship energy efficiency optimization management. The energy efficiency management level of the operating ship can be improved by the analysis and mining of the big data. In this paper, a big data analysis platform for ship energy efficiency management based on the widely used Hadoop platform architecture is designed. Afterward, due to the huge amount of involved data on the energy efficiency management which has exceeded the processing ability of traditional solutions, the big data analysis method is used to achieve the route division according to environmental factors, thus to lay the foundation for speed optimization in different segments of a route. Finally, a simple decision-making method of optimal engine speed based on the result of route division is proposed, which could improve ship energy efficiency and hence reduce CO2 emission.@en

Offshore wind is a relatively new industry and it is generally more expensive to generate electricity than many alternative renewable sources. Operation & Maintenance (O&M) makes up a significant part of the overall cost of running Offshore Wind Turbines (OWT). Since the O&M associated responsibility is shared among turbine manufacturers, wind farm operators and the offshore transmission owners, this has inevitably led to lack of information, duplication of effort and less efficiency. Big data analytics is one great technique that will drive future growth. In this paper, an integrated operational system of offshore wind farm is proposed deploying big data analytics. Firstly, the current state of the O&M of offshore wind farm and the big data analytics are introduced. Afterwards, a predictive maintenance model and a maintenance implementation model are proposed, and an integrated operational system is developed incorporating those two models in order to optimize maintenance planning and implementation. Finally, the possible contribution of such a system to a more effective O&M of offshore wind farm is discussed. @en