“The potential energy savings in the galley is significant considering it represents the third largest energy consumer on a vessel,” said Erik Schobesberger, vice president newbuilding sales, marine division at ALMACO Group.
The company is a major supplier of turn-key galley solutions and has contracts for a number of upcoming newbuild projects ranging from Costa to Celebrity, Hurtigruten, Saga and others.
Schobesberger said the first opportunity to save energy is sutting off equipment. This has led to ALMACO’s custom GEM (Galley Energy Management) system, which allows users to turn off equipment when not in use.
The latest newbuilds are getting the GEM 2.0 system as the technology continues to evolve.
“The biggest savings can be made on the vertical cooking equipment such as cooking ranges and deep fat fryers, as well as when you add ventilation control,” Schobesberger noted. “Once the ventilation is synchronized with the equipment, the energy use is optimized as the ventilation only occurs for the equipment that is actively in use, reducing overall energy waste by up to 30 percent.”
GEM integrates into the company’s Integrated Catering Management system offering, which also encompasses Refrigeration Equipment Monitoring as well as water and steam metering to create a holistic monitoring of the galley.
“With this complete landscape of galley operations, the owner and authorized crew can receive data to control and monitor all aspects of the consumption in the galley that is catered to the end user,” Schobesberger said. The latest GEM systems can also be setup to monitor water use.
As ships get bigger, the trend has been moving toward multiple galleys to serve alternative restaurants.
“This galley setup also optimizes the food logistics, that is, the distances from a smaller specialty galley to a specialty restaurant are smaller than the distance between the large main galley and the same specialty restaurants,” Schobesberger added.
With more galleys and space at a premium, the design aspect is as important as effort.
Schobesberger said that ALMACO was a progressive company open to new ideas and concepts – and is the only galley supplier to date to have done tailor-made work for the Chinese market.
“We have developed, alongside the owner, Asian-specific equipment such as Korean BBQs or woks that now serve the Asian market,” he said.
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