Ship-Board Power

[Brian]

One for people who've worked/are working on cruise ships...

 

what's the 'domestic' power on board? 110/240v, 50/60Hz?

[boatman]

The Fred Olsen Lines cruise ships I've been on all have 230V. One was UK 13A connectors and the others were European style Schuko.

[ImagineerTom]

There's no hard and fast rule but generally all mass-market ships made in the last 15 years will have 110 & 220 v in the passenger areas. Backstage / below decks is a different matter and varies from brand to brand because it depends on the nationality of the company that supplied the initial fit-out and the general nationality of the crew the company uses.

[Brian]

...will have 110 & 220 v in the passenger areas.

But what frequency? I'm guessing the 110 and 220 come from a common source with the 220 being 2-phase 110 (if you see what I mean).

[ImagineerTom]

It varies from ship to ship, there is no standard - it all depends on PRECISELY which ship you're on as no two ships have the same engines, generators or power configurations. When a ship is in port they will often plug in to a local power supply (called cold-ironing) in which case ship power will then be based on multiples of whatever the port's power supply and frequencies.

 

The power on board is also very dirty and fluctuates like crazy.

 

You'll need to be more specific in your question if you want to get a meaningful answer

[paulears]

You can't really get more specific than

what's the 'domestic' power on board? 110/240v, 50/60Hz?

[soundiesam]

Mainly depends what market the ship was purchased for.... most of the newer P&O ships that were purchased for the UK market have UK Outlets with 230v where as for instance Disney have 110v Edison sockets. there is one or two P&O cruises ship that were purchased off of other lines that have Edison sockets....

Ive never come across this cross Ironing thing.... doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

as mention before the power does fluctuate and can be dirty.

sam

[J Pearce]

It is becoming increasingly common as more ports ban ships from running any large engines while docked. I did some reading around it, as I was quite fascinated by temporary linkups that can carry astonishing amounts of current. Some are 6kV or more, to supply the MW loads of the big ships.

[JimWebber]

It is becoming increasingly common as more ports ban ships from running any large engines while docked. I did some reading around it, as I was quite fascinated by temporary linkups that can carry astonishing amounts of current. Some are 6kV or more, to supply the MW loads of the big ships.

 

Certain new build ships that I have been involved with have exactly that - In the region of tens of Megawatts at 11,000 Volts. The really interesting thing is that there is a 11kV socket at the shoreside, and another 11 kV socket on board.

 

Yes, the connection cable IS male to male at 11 kV

 

Despite being the worlds biggest widow maker, there are more interlocks and pilot circuits then you can shake a stick at. Not to mention permits, paperwork and risk assessments.... It's probably safer then plugging in a lantern on top of a tallescope....

 

Jim

[ImagineerTom]

You can't really get more specific than

yes you can, does he mean the power in the passenger cabins, the public areas, the theatre venues or the service areas?

What sort of thing is he plugging in - different circuits on the ship are spec'd with different tolerances dependant on how critical they are and the kind of drain they're going to experience (cabin power takes a beating every evening at 5pm when pax return to their cabins, make tea and use the hairdryer, public areas have hundreds of plugs but that's so the vacuum cleaner doesn't need a long extension lead so the ring main is surprisingly under-spec'd and "dirty" because it's just for hoovers)

Which specific ship is he talking about, there's NO standardisation even 2 identical ships will have different stats because they each have very different power needs on different cruises so the specification is fine-tuned via software to be as efficient as possible. A ship sailing the Caribbean full of american's will be killing the air-conditioning so the power will be tuned to optimise that, an identical ship taking brits out of Southampton and up to the baltic will hardly touch aircon but will be charging their digital camera's constantly.

Is the ship cold-ironing or in port? As I said before once plugged in the ship's inverters / transformers are at the mercy of the local supply.

If the OP's question is simply "can I plug my laptop" in then none of this really matters as the range of power's on board ships will be well within the scope of most laptop chargers and his drain not outside the expected parameters of passenger use, if however he's wondering about taking 50 moving lights onboard to use in a crew-deck party as well as some very expensive electrical equipment that needs a very specific power configuration then he needs to be more specific.

This question is essentially as vague as asking "what power do they have on a festival site?" - to which the answer is "you'll have to be more specific"

[kerry davies]

For soundiesam and others; cold-ironing has meant differing things over time.

[timmeh2]

Hi

 

On Cunard we had dual voltage, 240v single phase and 115/208 3-phase.

 

Which created the odd situation that the moving heads were UK but the dimmers were American.

 

The main for this being that the cabins had both types so passengers could bring whatever they'd fancy without fear of blowing anything up.

 

Conversion was done with step-up transformers on each deck, then phases were alternated through the cabins to try to balance the load.

 

All the best

Timmeh

[mac.calder]

I may have posted this before - oscilloscope metering socket aboard a cruise ship at takeout in early 2008 when the engines were being fired up

 

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b273/maccalder/DSC00138.jpg

 

Searching back through my memories, I believe all the newer Royal Caribbean ships had both 110V/208V and 220V supplies in the cabins. Frequency was 50Hz. Voltage was +/- 15% as a general rule and varied greatly by location on the ship (this was based on experience working on all three Freedom class ships, which are all built after 2004). Generally for domestic appliances the power was fine. Discharge lamps however did not like it when the azipods fired up leaving port (especially Mac2k's). The boom lift for maintenance in the promenade only liked certain power sockets too - and it was not uncommon getting stuck at the top (or failing to leave the ground) when the a few more people turned on their hair driers.

[timmeh2]

It varies from ship to ship, there is no standard - it all depends on PRECISELY which ship you're on as no two ships have the same engines, generators or power configurations. When a ship is in port they will often plug in to a local power supply (called cold-ironing) in which case ship power will then be based on multiples of whatever the port's power supply and frequencies.

 

The power on board is also very dirty and fluctuates like crazy.

 

You'll need to be more specific in your question if you want to get a meaningful answer

 

Hi

 

I'd like to challenge you on several points here. 'No two ships have the same engines, generators or power configurations'. Simply not true. Don't know if you've ever been to a shipyard but you'll find that every ship of the same class is basically built to the same design footprint. As one example I'll take the Vista and Improved Vista class, which is operated by Cunard as QV, QE, P&O as Arcadia and Costa on the Deliziosa. All built in the same place. The engines and electrical systems on these ships are basically identical.

 

'The power on board is also very dirty and fluctuates like crazy'

 

Again not always true. I would frequently meter-out the onboard supply to check everything was ok, and found that the 115v supply was surprisingly clean. I've seen far worse on land. You did get the odd voltage drop when the Azipods fired up, but it didn't bother any of our equipment.

 

With regard to running a ship from a land-based supply, yes it is true that happens, although when I worked on ships the only time they ever turned all the engines off was when we went in drydock. Even in port at least one DG would be running with another on standby. All the bridge and navigation equipment is run off giant storage batteries which are constantly being charged from either the DG or land supply.

 

All the best

Timmeh

[ImagineerTom]

//sigh//

 

I'd like to challenge you on several points here. 'No two ships have the same engines, generators or power configurations'. Simply not true. Don't know if you've ever been to a shipyard but you'll find that every ship of the same class is basically built to the same design footprint.

And I would refer you to my previous postings pointing out that the specific power settings are adjusted on an itinerary by itinerary basis to cope with the different power settings. I would also refer you to any of the RCCL voyager & freedom class ships (that I know VERY well) which are as "identical" (probably moreso) than the 12 identical ships Carnival group brought to use across all their brands (that's the ships you mention) but which have VERY different power setups and configurations on board. I can also point you to many many articals by engine suppliers, generator suppliers and electrical contracting companies each of whom are boasting about how they've got a newer, more efficient set up going in to the latest build of XXX ship class and how this means that the new ship is 1% more energy efficient than its sister. I refer you to just about any ship drydocking where significant chunks of electrical installation (even whole engines, generators or azi's) are changed thus making this ship different to its sisters.

With regard to running a ship from a land-based supply, yes it is true that happens, although when I worked on ships the only time they ever turned all the engines off was when we went in drydock. Even in port at least one DG would be running with another on standby. All the bridge and navigation equipment is run off giant storage batteries which are constantly being charged from either the DG or land supply

you're somewhat out of touch with the industry then - cold-ironing (and the associated engine shut-down) is increasingly becoming a requirement, especially so in the down-town ports and also ports in environmentally important locations. I'm struggling to think of a new build ship in the last 10 years that wasn't built with cold-ironing in mind, nor any new build (or refurbished) port that doesn't include adding cold-ironing facilities. With the kWh cost of shipboard power several times higher than the cost of plugging in to a land based supply it's not just ecological concerns that are pushing ships to cold-iron.

Thus I refer you to my previous comments, there is no "standard" from ship to ship and frankly there's not even a standard on-board a ship as it will vary from deck to deck dependant on what the power was intended to be used for. Plug sockets for the hoovers in the corridors - it doesn't matter, plug sockets for the broadcast centre or the Pursers computer system will have been the other side of a bank of power conditioners and UPS's to ensure that there's not the slightest fluctuation.

 

http://www.martrans.org/docs/theses/papoutsoglou.pdf

 

A rather long but surprisingly readable report in to cold-ironing; it addresses it from the point of view of ALL large ships (from container ships, through ferries to cruise ships) but will answer almost any question you have and does have an awful lot of graphs and diagrams showing how different ships have different power setups, use different voltages/frequencies and talks at some length about the problem that there is NO "standard" amongst ships and how the cost of implementing the systems is 30% higher because of the need for adaptors to convert the local supply to a multiple of something the ship can handle.