ALL Carnival Corp Ships To Get Upgraded Emergency Generators

[loujerb]

Let's see, only one of the incidents that Carnival has had involves a generator failure (Dream), and we do not know whether this is the engine that failed or the generator. The electrical generator attached to the engine is usually manufactured by someone else than the engine manufacturer. There is also no indication that a new emergency generator would be required to add the additional hotel services that they are talking about. Most emergency generators are oversized, and it may just require rewiring the emergency power bus to service more motor control centers that power the various things like elevators, vacuum toilet systems, and galleys.

On the Triumph, they only supplied power to some of the ship, apparently the generator was not big enough to power the hotel part of the ship or was there damage to the elecrical control center to route the power to the rest of it. They are talking about power to all of the hotel side of the ship,vacuum pumps to allow all of the restrooms to work, lights and air conditioning.

[joepeka]

With all the other naysayers.

Good one Pete..... I hope I'm not the only one that caught this. :)

[chengkp75]

The comment I referenced said they are upgrading all the emergency gensets. Isn't a genset the motor and generator?

 

I believe Wartsila furnishes and maintains the entire package. Is this correct ?

 

Nope. Wartsila may provide the entire gen set at new build, but their technical assistance is mostly limited to the engine. The generator is warranted and technical assistance comes from its manufacturer (ASEA, ABB, some others that I'm brain blocking on). And the generator on only one ship failed, so there is no guarantee issue. If Carnival decides they need a larger gen set, that is their decision, and their nickle.

[repo-cruiser]

I have yet to see a horse on a cruise ship.

I've seen plenty of jack umm Donkeys on the ship, and most of them are Carnival cheerleaders.;)

[repo-cruiser]

I prefer other cruiselines who are pro-active and not reactive like Carnival. Carnival waits until there are numerus breakdowns before they spend a few dollars, while other cruise lines maintain before there is a problem.

[chengkp75]

On the Triumph, they only supplied power to some of the ship, apparently the generator was not big enough to power the hotel part of the ship or was there damage to the elecrical control center to route the power to the rest of it. They are talking about power to all of the hotel side of the ship,vacuum pumps to allow all of the restrooms to work, lights and air conditioning.

 

I believe you are misinterpreting how the ship is built, and what Carnival actually said they were going to do.

 

As I've posted before, by SOLAS regulations, the emergency generator is required to be sized to provide power to those things required to evacuate the ship. That is mostly lighting, steering, fire pumps, and bilge pumps. Most cruise ships also include power to SOME hotel functions, such as the elevators and sewage pumps on the Dream. The equipment that is powered by the emergency generator is normally powered by the main generators. You can normally see how much lighting is powered by the emergency bus by looking for either red "E" or a series of green dot decals on the light fixtures. It is a significant reduction from full lighting.

 

My reading of Carnival's statement is that they will look at increasing what is powered by the emergency generator, but not to the extent of powering the entire hotel load ("more effective level of comfort to the passengers and crew on the ship.") That would require an emergency generator the same size as a main generator, since nearly the full capacity of one main generator is required to power the hotel in port. I can pretty well guarantee that no matter how bad Carnival's PR is, they are not going to fit a 12Mw generator as an emergency. Most emergency units run around 2Mw.

[arby70]

I think it would be great if Carnival learns from mistakes; I would hope we all do. It may not be intentional on their part, but improvements would be welcomed if they prevent conditions like on the Triumph.

[luv cruising 007]

I have yet to see a horse on a cruise ship.

 

I have on the Victory & even got bitten by a few

:D:D:D:D

 

those pesky seahorses

Edited March 17, 2013 by luv cruising 007

[hank in ohio]

On the Triumph, they only supplied power to some of the ship, apparently the generator was not big enough to power the hotel part of the ship or was there damage to the elecrical control center to route the power to the rest of it. They are talking about power to all of the hotel side of the ship,vacuum pumps to allow all of the restrooms to work, lights and air conditioning.

 

From what I've read it seems at present the backup gens are only sized for critical ship's systems, which one would read as bridge power, navigation lights, radar, sonar, gps, etc.

I would assume FULL hotel services would be second in power consumption only to ships propulsion, may even be more than propulsion.

[hank in ohio]

chengkp75 did you mention to everyone that you are a ships engineer?

[chill6x6]

Are they saying that something is wrong with the old ones?

[sjn911]

Its only a matter of time before some idiot gets one certified as a sleep apnea service animal and brings one on.

 

Like the day my great grandfather brought one into the living room and tied it to the Christmas tree while great grandmother was cooking..it's not nice to make grandma mad..my grandma and her sis were happy..LOL...a day I am glad..well I missed..LOL.. Sarah

[doitallWMB]

Upgraded management along with the generators would help.

[sjn911]

Upgraded management along with the generators would help.

 

 

Yes..I like the idea of a PR tv show special...hire some nice tech people here who are not throwing out the baby with the bathwater...have them do a show, Q and A with the best new and old maintenance people...this is how our system was...this is how it is...we have revamped everything...and tell the truth if they cutback on the maintenance...give up a year of salary ..the big boys, to fix it, they can afford it...like some small reigonal banks almost died with no dividend's for years after debauchery and then they were way lower for years with the double and tripple FDIC insurance paying off the big boys mess...I hate to not trust them...Carnival..i almost booked and affordable balcony...but i just can't...sigh.....let the big boys funnel some funds back in for a year or 2... would be nothing like the small buisness man does...Sarah

 

Wish I could trust this but just can't....

Edited March 17, 2013 by sjn911

[PhotoKirk]

We as passengers should not have had to worry about reduntant systems and such.

 

We should have just been fine with putting our faith in those that were taking care of us. We found out since this is not true.

 

I am still sad thinking about those poor Titanic victims. Why should they have thought there were not enough lifeboats to get everyone off the ship. Some times we leaqrn there was simply too much trust.

 

As long as those $$ are flowing in.....

 

Titanic? :rolleyes:

 

You should post less and think more.

[a1173]

I love chengkp75's posts given his experience with ship's engineering.

 

I would think that money intended to upgrade emergency generators would be better spent on redundancy in the switchgear. My understanding is on both Splendor and Triumph the second engine room was fine. However its generators couldn't power the ship because the fires took out parts of the switchgear that were not redundant. Perhaps fixing issues like this is part of the new 'safe return to port' specs required on ships built after July 2010. Why have two engine rooms if the switchgear design isn't redundant?

[chengkp75]

I love chengkp75's posts given his experience with ship's engineering.

 

I would think that money intended to upgrade emergency generators would be better spent on redundancy in the switchgear. My understanding is on both Splendor and Triumph the second engine room was fine. However its generators couldn't power the ship because the fires took out parts of the switchgear that were not redundant. Perhaps fixing issues like this is part of the new 'safe return to port' specs required on ships built after July 2010. Why have two engine rooms if the switchgear design isn't redundant?

 

That is the point exactly. With azipod ships, the pods are separated, but with the ships that have regular propulsion (motors, shafts, propellers) most of the ships have the two motors in one space (separate from the two engine room, but both motors in the same space). The new regulations require that the two propulsion motors be in separate spaces as well as the two engine rooms.

 

Given the fact that the Splendor and Triumph are essentially the same ships, I agree that there is more need to rewire the main generators so that a fire in one engine room will not damage the usefullness of the other, rather than increasing the size of the emergency generators.

[put me on a ship]

Good one Pete..... I hope I'm not the only one that caught this. :)

 

Nope, I caught it too, and was going to comment, but you beat me to it!!!:D

[jonbgd]

That is the point exactly. With azipod ships, the pods are separated, but with the ships that have regular propulsion (motors, shafts, propellers) most of the ships have the two motors in one space (separate from the two engine room, but both motors in the same space). The new regulations require that the two propulsion motors be in separate spaces as well as the two engine rooms.

 

SO basically it will be 4 watertite compartments instead of one?

Isnt that more complicated if the ship has screws than Azipods

On new construction that isnt a problem... What about a retro and doing all this work that Carnival says it would do.

[Rottweiler Puppy]

Titanic? :rolleyes:

 

You should post less and think more.

 

Side question. Are you a BBQ nerd? I might have sailed with you on the USS FUAROK or the USS SIIHPAPP or CVN FBHO perhaps?

Edited March 18, 2013 by Rottweiler Puppy

[a1173]

I'm guessing when this class (Splendor, Triumph, etc.) was designed they felt they had redundancy between the two engine/generator rooms. Therefore you don't need to put toilets and sewage on the emergency generator bus because you are not supposed to lose both engine/generator rooms. You spend the money on the two rooms, not on expanding the emergency generator.

 

I imagine it was unexpected when the Splendor fire in one room caused this redundancy to fail. The report on Splendor hasn't been released but if I were a designer (and I'm not a naval architect or designer) I would want to know why this happened. And assuming they do know it must not be easy to rectify or they would have done it before Triumph. Just guessing. I wouldn't think any designer or architect wants to see his ship towed for days with sewage everywhere.

Edited March 18, 2013 by a1173

[halcyonforever]

One aspect of my job is Disaster planning. When you are building backup systems like these generators, you are playing a difficult balancing game. For example one system I designed was for a bank. When the backup generator was running, only the core computer systems, 1 heater and the lobby terminals had power. The rest of the building would be dark and cold. (assuming winter when all our power outages happen) This was the chosen design limit of the generator to keep the cost as low as we could. When it first came in to use, we faced much the same issue with the sudden realization that choices made at the planning stage of what critical systems to keep online did not include things that later seemed important.

 

I have no doubt that when designing the backup system, they made a priority list of every subsystem, put them in order and had to draw a line of what the backup is capable of running and what it could not. My guess is that a large focus of the backup system would be routed to propulsion, which on the triumph would have been rendered pointless due to damage from the fire.

 

In hindsight toilets and ventalation seem ovbious, but when you are sitting in a planning meeting trying to find where to draw the line on every watt of power, thinking that if you are using the emergency system you are probably one step away from lifeboating everyone, they don't seem nearly as important.

 

From an emergency response perspective, I really don't see the triumph situation as all that much of a "disaster" that everyone reports it as.

 

Fire supression systems worked.

Hull integrity was maintained.

Injury and loss of life was averted

 

When you work with disasters you often look for the very worst scenario and prepare for that. Situations that fall somewhere above that line while unpleasant, are much easier to deal with.

[sjn911]

Great discussion....thanks all...

[chengkp75]

To all, last post before I return to work for two months.

 

What the new Safe Return to Port regulations would require are two main compartments, each an engine room with 2-3 generators and one propulsion motor. Doing this is not what Carnival is talking about for the Triumph type ships. They will look at re-routing the electrical cables so that the cabling from one engine room does not enter the other, with the possibility of damage in a fire.

 

A1173 is correct. The thought was that you had a redundant engine room, and the emergency generator is a second back-up. As I've stated before, the design, sizing, and load selection for emergency generators is driven by SOLAS for lifesaving requirements. What do we need to get the people off the ship? Any thing else is gravy.

 

Again, typical emergency generators are around 1.8-2.0 megawatts. The main generators are 12 megawatts, and it takes around 8-10 megawatts to power the entire hotel. I seriously doubt Carnival is planning on installing a 10-12 megawatt generator, as this would also require renewal of all of the emergency switchboard to handle the additional incoming power from the larger generator, not to mention the additional size (high up in the ship, usually around the sports deck area), additional fuel tankage (emergency generator must have enough fuel in a separate tank to run 24 hours at full load). They may increase the gen set somewhat, and add more load centers to power SOME hotel functions, but it won't be like a normal sea day if the emergency gen is on.

[MrPete]

Titanic? :rolleyes:

 

You should post less and think more.

 

Yeah. Titanic.

 

When you use a current ship in a current fleet, people's feelings tend to get hurt for some reason. I don't think anyone here thinks they are friends with the Titanic ot the White Star Line.

 

Pre Cruise Critic.