Marine NMEA 2000 Smart Sensors for Ship Batteries Supervision and Predictive Fault Diagnosis

Abstract

In this paper, an application for the management, supervision and failure forecast of a ship’s energy storage system is developed through a National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) 2000 smart sensor network. Here, the NMEA 2000 network sensor devices for the measurement and supervision of the parameters inherent to energy storage and energy supply are reviewed. The importance of energy storage systems in ships, the causes and models of battery aging, types of failures, and predictive diagnosis techniques for valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) batteries used for assisted and safe navigation are discussed. In ships, battery banks are installed in chambers that normally do not have temperature regulation and therefore are significantly conditioned by the outside temperature. A specific method based on the analysis of the time-series data of random and seasonal factors is proposed for the comparative trend analyses of both the battery internal temperature and the battery installation chamber temperature. The objective is to apply predictive fault diagnosis to detect any undesirable increase in battery temperature using prior indicators of heat dissipation process failure—to avoid the development of the most frequent and dangerous failure modes of VRLA batteries such as dry out and thermal runaway. It is concluded that these failure modes can be conveniently diagnosed by easily recognized patterns, obtained by performing comparative trend analyses to the variables measured onboard by NMEA sensors.

Predictive Fault Diagnosis for Ship Photovoltaic Modules Systems Applications

“…It is a kind of black box that records all types of data circulating through the NMEA 2000 network. It works in solidarity with the N2KExtractor software [ 16 ].…”

“…This device acts as a black box, acquiring all the data that circulates through the NMEA 2000 network. The acquired data is processed by the N2KExtractor software (Maretron, Carling Technologies Inc., Marine Technology Group, Jupiter, FL 33477, USA) that is installed on a PC connected to the NMEA 2000 network via a USB100 module [ 16 ].…”

“…It can measure DC voltage, current, and temperature of any power source or load. It can be used to monitor PVMs, batteries, alternators, wind generators, inverters, windlasses, or any other DC circuit [ 16 ].…”

“…Table 1 summarizes the used devices and sensors, monitored variables and parameters, with their measurement range and accuracy. A more detailed description of the monitoring network can be seen in our previous work in [16]. PB200 weather station has been used in the experimental tests.…”

Distributed Intelligent Battery Management System Using a Real-World Cloud Computing System

“…It can also be highly detrimental if the current discharges are too deep under conditions of high ambient temperatures or due to the confined space of the installation site. This phenomenon is general and affects different types of batteries, either Li-ion type [ 8 ] or Valve-Regulated Lead–Acid (VRLA)-type batteries (gel or Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM)), which, due to their comparatively low cost, are still widely used [ 9 ].…”