Blackout On Ships
Blackout on a ship mainly refers to the scenario where the ship loses its power due to failure of generators. Although ships always have its own power house to feed pumps, lighting, etc. failure of power will result in complete standstill condition of the ship.
Generally, in most of the ships, we have three generators, one is main, one is standby and one is for any type of maintenance getting carried out on it. The following are the reasons why blackouts happen:
- Generator Malfunction: If any type of problem occurs in machine like fuel pump failure, lube oil pressure loss, it will stop.
- Overload on Air Circuit Breaker: If sudden power is drawn from the generator like starting of heavy pumps and the power drawn exceeds the power given by the generator, a complete power loss will take place.
- Fire in Electric Panel: Any fire taking place in the main switchboard due to circuit or any other reason will result in power loss.
- During Change of Filters: While changing over from one filter to another, if the process is not smooth, will result in loss of fuel for the machinery.
On every ship, engineers make sure that such blackouts do not occur, however, sometimes due to certain factors which are not in control of human beings, blackouts occur. Bur during ship operations, it is always advisable to run two generators, so that, in any case, if one of the generators fail, the other one can take load.
If a ship has a history of blackout occurrence happening due to certain reasons, immediate consideration should be taken about it and proper measures should be implemented.