Region:

Greece

Type:

Power Management

The challenge

This project refers to a mega yacht which was built in1999 at Germany.  Apart from being the 3rd largest motor yacht in the world at the time of its construction, it was also built with highly sophisticated equipment.

Today, nineteen years later, due to the rapid technology evolution most of the electronic units have become outdated.  This means that these units have either become very costly to maintain, or in some cases, have become obsolete with no chance of support from its manufacturers.

Diesel generators control systems are one of the systems that have been affected.  Due to their age, they have suffered from several failures and a lack of spare parts could not insure proper operation of the auxiliary system of the vessel.  Needless to say that an upgrade of the controls was essential, otherwise the vessel could face a failure.

MAS solution

The new power management system was based on Woodward’s easYgen-3500XT controllers, which are a state of art units capable of meeting even the most demanding circumstances. All four main diesel generators were upgraded; one emergency diesel generator was upgraded as well.

Among others, the main characteristics of the new system are the following:

  • Start/stop and monitoring of the generator set
  • Manual generator set operation
  • Automatic generator set operation
  • Isochronous operation of generator sets (60Hz/450Vac)
  • KW and KVAr load sharing
  • Load Depended Start/Stop according to the (%) percentage of each generator set
  • Full type of synchronization from main generators to shore connection and vice versa (soft transfer type)
  • Full type of synchronization from main generators to emergency diesel generator and vice versa (soft transfer type)
  • HMI installation with all electrical measurements of all (5) new controllers through Modbus TCP/IP.

The project was undertaken on a turn-key basis.  This means that all Engineering, Procurement, Development, Installation and Commissioning was delivered by MAS.

The new system was fully tested under all possible scenarios and further to the clients’ request, MAS also took on the task of approving the system by the vessels certification body (Lloyd’s Register) and delivered the project to the client with great success.

Result

Today, the yacht is able to use a modern power management system for the control of the all generator sets with characteristics such as:

  • Latest type of technology with full support from the manufacturer
  • Added operational elements such as synchronization with shore connection
  • Full electronic control of speed and voltage without using any potentiometers
  • Full protection with an excessive number of measurements being monitored
  • User friendly graphic information about the system with a TFT screen at each controller and a central 17” central SCADA system.