It’s a required international standard in the shipping industry that all vessels are equipped on-board with a backup generator. This serves as a contingency power source in the event of a power failure from its primary power source, where it is termed as a ‘black out’ or “dead ship”.

The LNG vessel en-route to Australia has been relying on their on-board back-up generator for the past ten days, with no contingency plan in place in the event of failure of its secondary source of power, the vessel could come to a standstill if the on-board generator failed.

Three days away from the nearest port of Singapore, the vessel needed a contingency solution that could tide them over to reach their scheduled eventual port of call in Australia. It is only there that they were able to conduct maintenance to their primary power source as the supplier’s technical team are based there.