Thrusters Availability Influence on DP MODU Fuel Oil Consumption

When it comes to diesel-electric drilling vessels, there are various approaches to addressing fuel consumption and other ESG concerns. In this paper, the relation between the number of available thrusters on a Dynamic Positioning vessel is studied concerning the power consumption and, in addition, the fuel oil spent when using different configurations and numbers of thrusters running. The results do not always align with common sense, as using fewer thrusters may not necessarily lead to fuel savings and could even result in the opposite. The conclusions are based on both theoretical analyses and real-world case studies of different types of drilling vessels.