The Challenge
An offshore fish farm is a power-critical asset with no engine room. The feeding systems, aerators, refrigeration, and crew quarters all run on a platform exposed to open water — salt spray, monsoon rain, and direct sun, year round.
The electrical load is modest, but the stakes are not: an aeration failure of even a few hours in warm, still water can stress or kill an entire cage of stock representing the operator's full season. The gensets had to be weatherproof enough to live on deck, quiet enough for a crew that lives meters away, and redundant enough that no single failure ever leaves the farm dark.
Our Solution
We delivered a matched pair of 80kW marine gensets built on the Cummins 6BTA5.9 platform, each housed in a weatherproof sound-attenuated enclosure engineered for permanent open-deck installation. Cooling is by heat exchanger with a direct seawater circuit — no radiator, less noise, and no large air openings for spray to enter.
The two units run in a duty/standby arrangement under SmartGen control: if the running unit faults, the standby starts and picks up the load automatically, with no one needed at the panel.
Weatherproof marine enclosures purpose-built for open-deck installation — seawater inlet, fuel, and service connections routed to a single panel, with a viewing window for checking the controller without opening a door in the rain.
Full anti-vibration mounting between genset and platform structure, protecting the deck and keeping noise and vibration away from crew quarters a few meters away.
Automatic duty/standby changeover — the standby unit starts and takes the load on any fault, protecting the feeders and aerators that protect the stock.
Project Gallery
The Result
Both units were commissioned on the platform ahead of the season's stocking, and through their first year — including a full monsoon season on exposed water — the duty/standby pair has kept feeding, aeration, and refrigeration running without a single loss-of-power event.
The automatic changeover has been exercised in live conditions exactly as designed, and the operator has specified the same configuration for its next platform.
The matched pair turns a modest platform load into a resilient power system: one unit works, one unit is always ready, and the fish stock never depends on a single engine.