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AIDA equipping entire fleet with ABB's EMMA energy monitoring system

AIDA Cruises
AIDA is implementing ABB's EMMA system to optimize ship operation
AIDA Cruises announced it is equipping the entire fleet with ABB's energy monitoring and management system, EMMA.  

Seven AIDA ships have already been equipped with the new system, AIDA informs Seatrade Insider: AIDAsol installed in 2013, AIDAdiva, AIDAluna, AIDAbella, AIDAblu, AIDAmar and AIDAstella were equipped last year.

The remaining three ships in the fleet will follow, AIDA confirmed.

According to the cruise line, a few months after their installation the first EMMA units have already helped to establish new priorities for both technical improvements as well as optimizing operations.

The EMMA Energy Management System is a decision support tool to minimize the overall energy costs for individual ships and whole fleets.

In addition to collecting a huge database of operational and technical information, the system's main function is to give real-time decision support for operating the ship and its systems as close to the optimum as possible.

One of its most important features is its direct link to the ship's automation system as well as to the shore-side organization of AIDA Cruises.

500 signals per second are transmitted from the ship's automation system to the EMMA virtual machine. Propulsion power, propulsion efficiency, vessel trim, hotel and auxiliary power, air condition power per person, specific fuel oil consumption of the main diesel generators as well as total fuel consumption are tracked as the seven top-level categories.

The crew can utilise this information to optimise the ship's energy-efficient operation, for example by changing the engine configuration or optimizing the trim.

AIDA Cruises says EMMA's comprehensive scientific approach to analysing operational data bears enormous potential for improving the fleet's energy performance.

‘At AIDA we've realized that in order to achieve maximum efficiency, we must approach energy management onboard clinically and scientifically,’ said AIDA's svp marine operations, Jens Lassen, ‘this is why we installed EMMA. The biggest benefit of having such an advanced energy management system onboard is that mathematically analysed key performance indicators are at your fingertips, not only raw data.’

Heikki Soljama, md for ABB's marine and ports business, said he was pleased AIDA selected EMMA to further reduce its environmental footprint.

The ABB Group, which employs some 140,000 people in 100 countries, has already in the past supplied various components to AIDA's ships including an order worth $60m in 2012 to provide complete power and propulsion systems for the two newbuilds at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

For these ships ABB is supplying electrical systems including generators, and transformers for propulsion, engine room and distribution, frequency converters, bow thruster motors, other related power system equipment, as well as its latest generation Azipod XO propulsion systems.