FLC | SBIR project gives Navy innovative energy monitoring capability

SBIR project gives Navy innovative energy monitoring capability

May 5, 2021

A Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) project now provides Navy leadership with a dashboard system that captures and displays fleet energy and power data.

Live and available to authorized users fleet-wide, the Fleet Energy Conservation Dashboard (FECD) is the cloud-based component of the Global Energy Information System (GENISYS) that provides electronic log keeping, energy monitoring, and energy management at the shipboard and fleet levels.

The dashboard enables leadership and fleet planners to conduct energy and maintenance planning, understand the tactical impacts of energy, and support operational decision making. It also provides scientists and engineers the ability to conduct in-depth data mining and analysis to identify energy trends.

“FECD provides the user the ability to easily analyze energy usage trends across the fleet and to compare usage of different classes and vessels using a simple interface,” explained Bill Muras, a Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock user acceptance tester. “By bringing multiple data sets together under one interface, it also provides the ability to analyze to drilldown into certain systems and subsystems to gather more detailed information on a specific vessel’s energy consumption.”

In 2014 Frontier Technology, Inc. (FTI) utilized Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) funded technologies to develop a Decision Support and Optimization System Model for energy consumption for the United States Navy’s Fleet Forces Command (USFF). This effort resulted in the FECD. The dashboard encompasses both a shore-based data warehouse and analysis system and a ship-based information system focused on energy security, consumption and efficiency.

Fleet planners and Naval engineers will now have access to operational energy data from multiple data sources such as GENISYS; a float application electronic logbook (eLogbook); daily fuel reports; and shipboard machinery data in near real-time, providing the ability to develop a comprehensive energy snapshot. Advanced analytics provide an intuitive user interface, and while the current data set is predominantly historic monthly fuel use at the ship level, future data will include power and energy consumption at the ship, system, and subsystem level as well as the operational context behind the energy demand through GENISYS’s digital log keeping capability.

Muras said the data provided in the dashboard enables improved mission planning, offering a clearer understanding of how ship energy use affects operational readiness. FECD will provide data to answer questions such as the amount of fuel burned at Flight Quarters in the North Atlantic vice South Pacific or the number of barrels consumed by Norfolk-based ships during FY17 through FY19.

As additional data sources become available to the GENISYS applications, GENISYS will support Condition Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+), monitoring and reporting on the performance of several ship systems and providing alerts when these systems are performing out-of-range or specification. Those systems can then be flagged for maintenance.

The dashboard is available to all Navy personnel who track, analyze, and provide decision-making support regarding energy consumption across the U.S. Navy surface fleet. Authorized users can access the program from anywhere with adequate internet access. Users are encouraged to provide feedback for continued improvement of the dashboard. More information on how to access and use FECD is provided below.

The formal launch of FECD marks an important milestone in the GENISYS acquisition plan and the Navy’s ability to track and manage energy consumption across the fleet. It is also an important step in the Navy’s effort to digitize fleet data and more proactively manage shipboard machinery. FECD and GENISYS will continue to evolve to meet fleet needs and inform decision making for years to come.

“At any given time, the Navy has dozens of innovative projects like this underway,” said Dean Putnam, NAVSEA’s Small Business Innovative Research program manager. “The high-tech small business community is constantly at work, solving some of the Navy’s most complex challenges.”

FECD is an unclassified system that uses an intuitive, Common Access Card (CAC)-protected user interface and an integrated, online user guide.