Nor Lines and Rolls-Royce have signed a groundbreaking “Power-by-the-Hour” service agreement for the two vessels Kvitbjørn and Kvitnos. The new service offering harnesses the power of “Big Data” to monitor, plan and perform maintenance and repairs on all the equipment it has installed on the cargo vessels.
Power-by-the-Hour is a completely new service from Rolls-Royce Marine, and the agreement with Nor Lines is the first of its kind. The service builds Rolls-Royce’s many years of experience with equipment monitoring, proactive servicing and available solutions in the aerospace market.
The agreement means that Nor Lines is handing responsibility for service planning and performance back to the equipment’s supplier, Rolls-Royce. Nor Lines pays a fixed charge per hour of operation, per ship. Rolls-Royce will monitor the equipment aboard each vessel from on shore through the use of onboard sensors. It will be able to connect to the ship and carry out service activities remotely or, if necessary, send out a service engineer to do the job. The agreement also covers planned maintenance, while day-to-day maintenance aboard ship will be carried out by the shipping company itself.
Nor Lines has also ordered Rolls-Royce’s latest Energy Management System, which logs energy consumption and emission levels. The data then can be used to make the correct operational decisions for the ships.
Nor Lines took delivery of MS Kvitbjørn from the Tsuji shipyard in China in 2015. It was the first of two vessels ordered by the shipping line, and was the first Norwegian gas-powered coastal cargo vessel. The Kvitbjørn’s sister ship, MS Kvitnos, was delivered later the same year. Now, the vessels sail back and forth between ports in central Europe and along the Norwegian coast up to Hammerfest. The Kvitbjørn and the Kvitnos were also the first commercial vessels to be ordered with Rolls-Royce’s award-winning NVC 405 Environship design.
The agreement with Nor Lines, covers an array of Rolls-Royce equipment onboard the Kvitbjørn and Kvitnos, including a Bergen B35:40 engine powered by LNG, the Promas combined rudder and propeller, a hybrid shaft generator to optimise use of electrical power and an innovative wave-piercing hull design. The combined technologies that make the Environship concept reduce CO2 emissions by up to 40 per cent compared to similar diesel powered vessels, dependent on operational profile.