Getting control of vessel performance data

Stathis Kalkounis, Energy & Environmental Engineer, Central Mare

As demands for quality of vessel performance data increase, companies need to check data at least for every voyage and ensure every data point is backed up by evidence.

Stathis Kalkounis, Energy & Environmental Engineer, Central Mare explained 

Regulations such as ETS and FuelEU Maritime are pushing shipping companies to improve the quality of their vessel performance and emissions data. If data is wrong, it changes the amount of money you need to pay. You may end up in a charter party dispute.

Compliance is not about what you report, but what you can defend to the verifier, showing proper procedures have been followed, said Stathis Kalkounis, Energy & Environmental Engineer, Central Mare, speaking at People Tech Maritime Athens in April.

You need to be able to prove your data is accurate and do this continuously and defensively, he said.

For many years, emissions reports were made manually with periodic reports, containing subjective inputs, inconsistent methodology and no verification. But it is not possible to do it that way anymore, he said.

Mr Kalkounis suggests validating vessel data at least on a voyage or monthly basis, not just at the end of the reporting year, because it can get very complicated sorting problems out. “We need to shift from typical reporting to continuous and tight control of our data,” he said.

If you don’t continuously maintain data quality, the vessel condition is effectively unknown.

The worst system isn’t one which obviously fails, it is “one that produces unverified data that appears to be reliable,” he said.

But the emissions data architecture in shipping companies is still a mixture of onboard systems, shore platforms, noon reports, and spreadsheets sent by email, mainly completed manually. There is often no validation layer to spot if any data is missing, inadequate or wrong, he said.

EU ETS example

As an example of the importance of data quality, consider a tanker sailing from Georgia, outside the EU, partially discharging outside a Greek port in a ship-to-ship transfer, and going on to Libya to discharge the rest of the cargo.

Under EU ETS regulations, ship-to-ship operations outside the port limit are not considered as “port calls.”

If the ship-to-ship transfer outside the Greek port is incorrectly recorded as a “port stay,” the vessel is liable to buy emission credits for 50 per cent of the voyage from Georgia to Greece, and 50 per cent of the voyage from Greece to Libya. (50 per cent because it is a voyage to or from the EU, not within the EU). This amounts to 372.8 tonnes CO2, and at a price of Euro 75 per tonne, works out at Euro 28,000.

If the transfer in Greece is correctly recorded as a ship-to-ship transfer, not a port call, the total carbon cost is zero. That is a big difference “for a simple noon report mistake.”

The inverse problem could also happen, where a company believes it does not have to pay anything, but in reality needs to buy Euro 28k of carbon credits. But this is only discovered at the end of the year when it is very hard to ask the charterer for the money. The charterer may have asked the shipowner to declare that it does not have any further obligations after the end of the voyage.

Working with data

The four important sets of data are your fuel consumption logs, your mileage, the vessel operation sequence, and the CII exemption figures.

All of these data sets need to be backed up by supporting documents, such as noon reports, bunker delivery notes, or letters of protest. This is a written notice issued by a ship’s master to record dissatisfaction or objection regarding specific events or conditions affecting a vessel or cargo.

Office personnel collect the data, reconcile it, identify errors by comparing with the supporting documents, and fill in missing numbers.

Fuel consumption figures in the noon reports need to match the amount which was bunkered. If there is a quantity dispute between the captain and fuel supplier, the fuel consumption should match the data in the letter of protest.

You need to note the fuel type from the bunker delivery note, because different fuels have different emission factors. If that is not available, you can use the fuel viscosity to determine if it is heavy fuel oil, medium gas oil, or light fuel oil.

The mileage during sailing and manoeuvring needs to be reported and cross-checked with the vessel logbooks.

The noon report needs to describe what operation the vessel was doing, including whether it was in a port or anchored outside.

Sometimes a vessel will call at multiple berths in a port. “This is a tricky point that [some] captains don't understand,” he said. Under EU ETS the “berth” is the first berth the vessel calls at, as there cannot be more than one first berth during the same port call.

For a ship-to-ship transfer, the times for starting and stopping need to be recorded correctly.

CII exempt activities need to be recorded in the noon report. For example, fuel consumed by pumps for cargo discharging is not counted under CII. If the pump is powered by an electric driven hydraulic power pack, record the kilowatt hours of consumption to work out the fuel involved in generating the power. Boiler consumption for cargo heating is also not counted under CII.

You need to pay special attention to cross year voyages when part of the emissions are in a different calendar year. Most software packages for vessel performance do not have tools to accommodate this, the data needs to be modified by hand, he said.

You can watch the talk on YouTube at https://youtu.be/_hE2-GgbQNI