Seaspan uses AI to cut fuel, navigation incidents

“More efficient navigation means you use less fuel,” said Seaspan chief operating officer Torsten Pedersen. “Less incidents means your insurance premiums go down in the long term. We are one of the first movers, but the entire shipping industry needs to travel in this direction.”

Analysis found that 60% of Seaspan’s vessels were altering course to avoid safety management violations and collision risks, with an average deviation alteration time of 20 minutes at 18 knots. This led to increased fuel burn and speed adjustments to stay on schedule.

According to the analysis, Seaspan ships equipped with Orca AI reduced their fuel consumption by US$100,000 per year, equating to a reduction of 500 tonnes of CO2.

“Harm reduction is hard to measure in terms of return on investment, but fuel reduction is not,” said Mr Pedersen. “Safety is the most important factor, but this cost benefit in terms of operational savings is the icing on the cake.”

Using Starlink’s LEO connectivity, Seaspan can send real-time information between ships and shore offices, and it uses Orca AI’s FleetView dashboard to monitor and track its vessels.

With FleetView, operations teams can identify navigation trends, understand fleet performance, pinpoint areas for improvement and promote best practices across the fleet.

“Obviously, a root-cause analysis must be performed in the event of an incident, but FleetView enables managers to take a step back, analyse events that did not result in an incident and generate valuable learnings that can be rolled out fleetwide,” said Mr Pedersen.

Seaspan’s digitalisation strategy is to use technologies to improve operations, data reporting and navigation safety while lowering emissions.