Cost Reduction Through Naval EMC Regulation
The proposal from the work group “EMC for future ships” to modify the Lloyd’s Naval Rules with respect to EMC has been accepted and will be implemented January 2017. Partners of RH Marine in this work group are: Damen, Thales, DMO, Lloyd’s Register and University of Twente. The intention of this proposal is to reduce EMC related costs by applying a risk based approach combined with smart installation methods. This approach stimulates the cooperation between ship owner, yard and subcontractors, leading to better ships. EMC stands for Electromagnetic compatibility, meaning that equipment won’t be interfered by phenomena such as radio frequency fields and switching transients. Neither may the equipment cause such levels of interference that other equipment suffers from this disturbance. Complying with these regulations is often experienced as a challenge, for all markets. Until now, the Lloyd’s Naval rules offers two options to deal with EMC. One option requires the application of equipment that complies with the maritime EMC standard IEC60533 (which is hardly available on the market); the other requires use of equipment that complies with an appropriate naval standard, MIL-SPEC (expensive and possibly outdated). Neither of the two options considers that even when equipment complies with the standard it is still possible that interaction between equipment can cause interference. The new option, which can be used from the beginning of next year, is that a risk based approach is followed. This enables a more flexible selection of equipment, as long as the combination proves not to cause interference or to suffer from disturbance.