Auto Machine Learning for predicting Ship Fuel Consumption

In recent years, machine learning has evolved in a fast pace as both algorithms and computing power are constantly improving. In this study, a machine learning model for predicting the fuel oil consumption from engine data has been developed for a cruise ship operating in the Baltic Sea. The cruise ship is equipped with legacy volume flow meters and newly installed mass flow meters, as well as an extensive set of logged time series data from the machinery logging system. The model is developed using state-of-the-art Auto Machine Learning tools, which optimises both the model hyper parameters and the model selection by using genetic algorithms. To further increase the model accuracy, a pipeline of different models and pre-processing algorithms is evaluated. An extensive model trained for a certain system can be used for optimisation simulation, as well as online energy efficiency prediction. As the models automatically adapt to noisy sensor data and thus function as a watermark of the machinery system, these algorithms show a potential in predicting ship energy efficiency without installation of additional mass flow meters. All tools used in this study are Open Source tools written in Python and can be applied on board. The study shows great potential for utilising large amounts of already available sensor data for improving the accuracy of the predicted ship energy consumption