Nor Lines, Rolls-Royce Ink 1st “Power-by-the-Hour” Service Agreement

Norwegian shipping company Nor Lines and UK-based engineering company Rolls-Royce have signed a “Power-by-the-Hour” service agreement for Nor Lines’ two LNG-powered 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 installed on the cargo vessels, Rolls-Royce said.

As disclosed, Power-by-the-Hour is a new service from Rolls-Royce Marine and the agreement with Nor Lines is the first of its kind. Under the agreement, Nor Lines will be handing responsibility for service planning and performance back to the equipment’s supplier, Rolls-Royce.

With Nor Lines paying 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. The engineering company 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 ships will be carried out by the shipping company itself.

“The service contract insures us against downtime due to equipment failure. At the same time, it ensures that the Rolls-Royce equipment we have on board functions as optimally as possible,” Sigvald Breivik, Nor Lines’ CEO, explained.

Nor Lines has also ordered Rolls-Royce’s 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.

“Both the Power-by-the-Hour and Energy Management systems have been developed because we now have the capacity to digitally monitor onboard systems from on shore. Our ability to record and analyse huge volumes of data means we can offer ships better and more comprehensive service agreements than we could just a few years ago,” Knut Hovland, Rolls-Royce, Director Customer and Services, commented.

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.