By Geoff Fein
As the Navy looks to extend the service life of its current surface fleet, officials are also exploring a number of ways to make those ships more fuel efficient, according to a Navy official.
One idea is examining the potential to install hybrid drives on Arleigh Burke-class ships, to get the same kind of savings during the USS Makin Island‘s (LHD-8) maiden voyage, Rear Adm. Nevin Carr, Chief of Naval Research, told Defense Daily at last week’s Naval Energy Forum in McLean, Va.
“We are assisting with NAVSEA…a NAVSEA initiative for hybrid drive for DDG-51s. NAVSEA is targeting the USS Truxton (DDG-103) to get the first version,” he said. “It is a power recovery unit attached to the reduction gears. So you can run a single generator and, if you lose that generator, for whatever reason, you have enough bridge power to restart another generator.”
The current practice today is to run two generators (ships have three) even though the power being drawn is well within the capabilities of one, Carr noted, because sometimes a ship can have power spikes or there might be a need to start a fire pump.
“So, this hybrid system will give the ability to just run a single generator. Right there, you are cutting in half the amount of fuel you are using to run generators and run electricity,” he added. “That’s the intermediate solution.”
The Navy is focused on DDG-51s for the near future, Carr said, as well as studying what the power needs of future warships will resemble. “So there is an opportunity in that future ship to introduce some leap ahead technologies.”
Now is the time for the Navy to look at a blank drawing board and think about that next generation integrated power supply. If the service can really get to an all electric ship, it will lead to completely rethinking the way electricity is generated, Carr said.
In addition to focusing on how to make the surface fleet more fuel efficient, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus gave service personnel some very specific guidance and some challenging goals to reach, Carr said.
During his speech on the first day of the forum, Mabus laid out his five energy targets that the Navy will meet over the next decade.
Those include:
- Changing the way the Navy and Marine Corps award contracts.
“The lifetime energy cost of a building or a system, and the fully burdened cost of fuel in powering those, will be a mandatory evaluation factor used when awarding contracts,” Mabus said. “We are going to hold industry contractually accountable for meeting energy targets and system efficiency requirements.”
- The Navy will demonstrate, by 2012, a Green Strike Group composed of nuclear vessels and ships powered by biofuel. And, by 2016, the Navy will sail and deploy that Strike Group as a Great Green Fleet
- By 2015, the Navy will reduce petroleum use in its commercial fleet by 50 percent.
“We’ll do this by replacing our current fleet, as they go out of service, with a new composite fleet of flex fuel vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and neighborhood electric vehicles,” Mabus added.
- By 2020, the Navy will produce at least half of its shore-based energy requirements on its installations from alternative sources.
- Lastly, Mabus is asking all of the Navy, by 2020, to have half its total energy consumption for ships, aircraft, tanks, vehicles, and shore installations come from alternative sources.