Abstract

In times of rising fuel costs apperars wind as propulsion assistance for cargo ships at certain routes as an economically interesting alternative. Analysing the fuel saving potential of different wind assistance technologies with operational simulations, comparisons can be undertaken. For this purpose, the routes of typical vessels (product tanker, bulk carrier) are simulated for a time span of 5 years, using weather data from the ERA-40 database from the ECMWF (European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). Each route is optimized for selected simulation time spans using an evolutionary strategy (differential evolution) to study the improvement potential on fuel savings with small route variations. The simulations show that fuel savings up to 15% are possible. These savings are compared to the increased capital and operational costs, and different scenarios are discussed.