Interesting Ship of The Week - Olympic Hera and Olympic Zeus

This weeks interesting ship is the ULSTEIN A122 AHTS vessel, Olympic Hera, which was just recently delivered to Olympic Shipping by Ulstein Group. Olympic Hera is the sister vessel of the Olympic Zeus, which has been highly attractive in the market since her delivery six months ago.

Ordered in December 2006, the Olympic Hera and Olympic Zeus are state-of-the-art AHTS/OCV designed for towing, anchor-handling, survey, crane, and ROV operations as well as general offshore construction work. Along with their deep water capabilities, both vessels have excellent sea-keeping and performance characteristics ensuring good fuel economy and low emissions.

“From our experiences with Olympic Zeus in the North Sea we see that the vessel runs diesel-electric 80% of the time. Figures show that fuel consumption in these modes is about 50% lower than for most competing vessels due to the hybrid solution onboard,” says Olympic Shipping senior vice president Runar Stave.The Ulstein Group has more:

In deep water
The Olympic Hera measures 93.8 metres long, 23 metres wide and 10 metres from main deck to keel, and performs anchor handling, supply, subsea and construction operations. The bollard pull is approximately 260 tonnes. The Olympic Zeus and Olympic Hera can also be equipped with a 250-tonne heave-compensated offshore crane and two A-frames of different types. The large dimensions of the Olympic Zeus and Olympic Hera add stability, and together with the extra power installed onboard, make the vessels especially well suited to carry out deepwater operations.

“We were Ulstein Design´s first customers 10 years ago, and received the anchor handling tug supply vessels Olympic Pegasus and Olympic Hercules in 2002. The vessels perform well, but the market has changed. The trend has shifted from operations at depths of 1000–1500 metres to advanced subsea operations down to 2000–4000 metres. In order to provide the best services for the market at present, we need even larger ships with advanced capacities. With one large 500-tonne and two 450-tonne drums, the winch aboard the vessels has enormous capacity. Due to these newbuildings, we have become one of the world leaders in operations at such depths,” RemÃ¸y says.

Green operations
The Olympic Zeus and Olympic Hera are the first anchor handling/construction vessels with this type of diesel-mechanical/diesel-electric hybrid propulsion solution. The propeller on the system can either be driven directly by the diesel engine or by an electric motor powered by generator sets. The two modes can also be combined.

“The system has been tailor made to fit the vessels’ dynamic and versatile work operations. Three key elements provide the system with unsurpassed dynamic capabilities and low fuel consumption: The extensive electric portion allows the majority of vessel work operations to be performed in diesel-electrical mode, the development of a user-friendly interface, and the highly advanced automation system that fully utilises the dynamic nature of the hybrid propulsion concept. We call our concept Green operations, a joint venture by Olympic Shipping and Ulstein Group. The fuel-efficient vessels have low NOx emissions and meet DNV’s Clean Design criteria”, says Ulstein Group deputy CEO Tore Ulstein. “Given that the vessels only require low or medium power the majority of the time they are in operation, the engines can run with optimum fuel efficiency.”

“Only a few vessel operations require the extra power from the hybrid solution. This leads to thousands of litres of reduced fuel consumption every single day. We currently see that others are also entering into the market with hybrid vessels, and we welcome that. This is all the better for the environment,” concludes Stave.

“The Olympic Zeus has shown that this is the proper way to go, and now that we also have the Olympic Hera in the fleet, I am convinced that we chose the right design company and shipyard,” says a satisfied Stig RemÃ¸y.