A+T are thrilled to be assisting the development of Smart Green Shipping’s FastRig wing sail for commercial ships. A+T have provided the wind sensors and processor for this project. This integrates wind measurement from the wing with wing rotation, vessel heading and speed to measure all of the inputs for evaluating the wing’s performance.
Following extensive land-based testing at Hunterston in Scotland, the first FastRig wing sail is now installed on the Pacific Grebe, an NTS owned, UK flagged, nuclear waste carrier, chartered by SGS to undertake full scale sea trials. The ship was chosen to demonstrate that FastRigs can be quickly installed on the most technically challenging ships, and as she is not carrying any cargo SGS and the University of Southampton can conduct formal sea trials using the International Towning Tank Conference approved wind-assist testing protocols – the first commercially available wind-assist technology to do so.
One of the innovations A+T has brought to this is to supply its advanced wind sensor which has an in-built 6 axis accelerometer. While this is designed to compensate for masthead motion on high performance race boats, it is being used in this application to measure and log, at 100 Hz, all of the accelerations at high and low frequencies in the wing.
Data is being validated by University of Southampton with Houlder collecting data from the ship. University of Southampton Wolfson Unit’s Dr Martyn Prince added: “There are wind-assist technologies in development but few have had their predicted fuel savings independently verified at sea. Wind power harnessed using well-engineered equipment and backed by data provided by these predictive tools offers one of the most effective ways for the sector to reduce emissions.”