Frugal SmartPropulsion
Frugal SmartPropulsion is an AI-driven propulsion optimisation system that layers onto a merchant vessel's existing control setup, continuously computing the best engine RPM and propeller pitch to cut fuel burn and CO2 emissions by up to 15%.
What is Frugal SmartPropulsion?
Frugal SmartPropulsion, still branded Frugal Propulsion across much of the website, is an automated propulsion optimisation system for merchant vessels, built by the Danish engineering company Frugal Technologies ApS in Aalborg. It is an on-top system: it does not replace the ship's propulsion control system and never drives the engine or the propeller directly. It sits above the existing control system, so every engine protection and alarm function stays intact, and remote control reverts to the original system if a cable breaks or an interface fails.
Three components make up a delivery. A touchscreen HMI panel on the bridge acts as an additional power handle, with an optional second screen in the control room. An electronics cabinet aboard collects sensor readings — speed, fuel consumption, RPM, pitch, draught, trim, flow and torque — and links the panel, the sensors and the existing control system. The third part is the Cloud Calculation Engine, which accumulates data from equipped vessels and performs the actual computation.
That engine combines Model Predictive Control with machine learning. It learns three things: which engine loading is most efficient at each RPM, how combinations of RPM and pitch translate into speed and slip, and how draught and trim change the optimal curve. A sea trial of roughly five hours seeds the model by sweeping RPM and pitch combinations to establish the safe operating envelope. From there the system deploys an optimised propeller curve and refines it as data accumulates, issuing no more than one new curve every twenty-four hours to avoid wear-inducing adjustments.
On top of the curve sit a speed pilot for just-in-time arrivals, a power pilot that caps output for EEXI compliance, a hybrid mode that arbitrates between the two, and ShaPoLi shaft power limitation. The system also monitors hull and propeller fouling to predict cleaning, and computes the vessel's CII rating. A companion platform, My Data, visualises fleet performance in near real time, while an open API feeds the same data into an operator's own business intelligence. An optional second phase adds a variable frequency drive, cutting the need for auxiliary engines in day-to-day operation.
Claimed savings depend on the propeller: up to 15% on controllable-pitch vessels, 3 to 4% on fixed-pitch ones. Frugal Technologies is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Emerson.
What it does
- Continuously computes the optimal engine RPM and propeller pitch for the speed the navigator selects
- Holds a target GPS speed automatically through its speed pilot, supporting just-in-time arrivals
- Caps propulsion power through its power pilot and its ShaPoLi shaft power limitation, serving EEXI compliance
- Switches automatically between constant-power and constant-speed operation in hybrid mode, according to draught and weather
- Monitors hull and propeller fouling and predicts when cleaning is due
- Calculates and tracks the vessel's CII rating in near real time
- Exposes collected vessel data through the My Data web interface and an open API
When to use Frugal SmartPropulsion / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Frugal SmartPropulsion is the right fit.
When to use Frugal SmartPropulsion
- Shipowners and operators of existing merchant vessels looking to retrofit fuel savings rather than order a new build
- Fleets running controllable-pitch propellers, where the published savings are largest — 10 to 20% on the Malik Arctica case
- Technical superintendents and chief engineers who need optimisation that leaves every engine protection and alarm system untouched
- Operators facing IMO EEXI and CII obligations who must cap shaft power and document carbon intensity
- Fleet managers who want vessel telemetry piped into an existing business intelligence stack through an open API
When not to use Frugal SmartPropulsion
- Anyone expecting self-service software: the delivery includes an electronics cabinet, a bridge HMI panel and a sea trial
- Buyers who need a published price, a free plan or a free trial before talking to a salesperson — none exists
- Vessels whose propulsion control system cannot be interfaced, since the product never drives engine or propeller directly
- Operators wanting results within days: the algorithm needs from one month to several to converge, and heavy weather slows it further
- Users looking for a mobile app or any consumer-facing access, which the product does not offer
How to use Frugal SmartPropulsion
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Contact Frugal Technologies through the website form or by email; there is no self-service sign-up
- Have the vessel's operation analysed to verify the savings potential, often including a sea trial
- Agree the project scope and the investment once the potential savings are documented
- Let Frugal technicians and their marine technology partners design and configure the installation
- Schedule the installation: roughly three days in total, of which one day alongside the pier for phase one
- Run the seeding sea trial of about five hours, sweeping RPM and pitch combinations to map the safe envelope
- Sail on the initial propeller curve while the Cloud Calculation Engine gathers operational data
- Receive successive optimised curves, typically the second after about a week and at most one per day thereafter
- Operate day to day from the bridge: set thrust with the buttons or the on-screen slider, then enable the speed or power pilot
- Optionally add the variable frequency drive of phase two at the next dry docking
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Savings documented case by case: 10 to 20% on the Malik Arctica with a variable frequency drive, 3% worth 70,000 to 100,000 USD a year on a fixed-pitch chemical tanker
- Genuine on-top design that leaves every existing engine protection and alarm system in place and hands control back on failure
- Short installation window, about one day alongside the pier for the first phase, with minimal operational interference
- Interfaces already established with MAN Energy Solutions, Norisys, Wartsila Lyngso and Kongsberg propulsion control systems
- Data returned to the customer through an open API and a ready-made web interface rather than locked in the vendor's tool
- Direct help with IMO regulatory obligations through power capping for EEXI and automatic CII calculation
- Backed since 2023 by Emerson and its global sales and service network
Cons
- No published price of any kind: no price list, no range, no pricing page, and nothing in the downloadable documents
- No terms and conditions, no privacy policy, no data processing agreement and not a single mention of the GDPR, from a company established in the EU
- No hosting country or region is ever named; the only statement is that servers use banking encryption standards
- Savings figures disagree across the company's own material: up to 15% on the site, 10% guaranteed in the flyer, 3 to 4% in the 2025 fixed-pitch brochure
- Return-on-investment claims disagree too, ranging from six months in the flyer to six to eighteen months on the site
- Parts of the site are out of date, still describing Frugal as a Danish owner-led company while the About page declares it a wholly owned Emerson subsidiary
- The root address now redirects to an Emerson catalogue page, so visitors no longer reach the product site unless they know the deeper URL
Pricing & Plans
No pricing is published. Frugal Technologies offers no free plan and no free trial, and no price list, price range or pricing page exists on the site or in its downloadable documents. The commercial model is a project sale: the company first analyses the vessel's operation to verify the savings potential, and only then is the project scope defined and the investment agreed. The investment is split into an initial phase covering the fuel and CO2 optimisation, described as limited, and an optional second phase adding a variable frequency drive at the next dry docking. Note that the only monetary figures published on the site are estimated savings, not prices.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Frugal SmartPropulsion handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no mention of the GDPR anywhere on the site. A full-text search across every collected page and its archived HTML returned zero occurrences of GDPR, data protection, or their Danish equivalents. No privacy policy, no terms, no data processing agreement, no data protection officer and no subprocessor list are published. A cookie consent banner is installed, but it links to no policy page. This silence is notable because Frugal Technologies ApS is established in Denmark and is therefore squarely within the Regulation's scope. The absence should be read as an undocumented position rather than a refusal: the company nowhere states that it does not comply. Buyers will have to obtain the GDPR documentation directly from the vendor.
Who owns the data?
Frugal Technologies publishes no terms and conditions and no privacy policy, so no contractual statement of data ownership exists on the site. The only relevant sentence is a marketing one: the Cloud Calculation Engine runs on secured servers that use banking encryption standards to ensure data is available only to us and you. That phrasing implies shared access between vendor and customer, but it is not a clause and it is not binding. The engine is described as accumulating all data collected across equipped vessels, which suggests aggregation beyond a single customer's fleet. Prospective buyers should treat data ownership as an entirely open point to be settled in the commercial contract, because nothing on the public site settles it.
Reuse rights
No public document grants or restricts reuse, because neither terms of service nor a privacy policy is published. What the site does describe is a deliberate flow of data back to the customer: the collected measurements are made available through the My Data visualisation platform, and an open API is listed in the scope of delivery so that operators can feed the same data into their own business intelligence tools. In practice the customer is expected to reuse its own vessel data freely. On the vendor side, the data feeds the machine learning that generates the optimised propeller curves. Neither permission nor limitation is written down anywhere public, so the scope of reuse depends entirely on the negotiated contract.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Almost nothing is disclosed. The only statement about hosting is that the Cloud Calculation Engine runs on secured servers using banking encryption standards, so that data is available only to the vendor and the customer. No country, no region, no jurisdiction and no cloud provider is named anywhere on the site or in the downloadable documents, and no subprocessor list is published. The website itself is served through Cloudflare, but that says nothing about where vessel data is stored. Since Frugal Technologies ApS is a Danish company, EU hosting is plausible, yet it is nowhere confirmed and should not be assumed. Any buyer with data residency requirements will have to obtain a written answer from the vendor, because the public site provides none.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Frugal SmartPropulsion.
- The root address frugal.dk redirects to an Emerson catalogue page, so the product site is only reachable through deeper URLs — check which entity you are actually contracting with
- No terms, no privacy policy and no data processing agreement are published, leaving data ownership, retention and reuse entirely to the negotiated contract
- The Cloud Calculation Engine is described as accumulating data from all equipped vessels, so operational data from your fleet may inform models used beyond it
- Savings and payback claims contradict each other across the company's own documents; insist on figures computed for your specific vessel rather than a headline percentage
- Parts of the site are stale — the FAQ and the flyer still call Frugal an owner-led Danish company, and a team member is linked to another person's LinkedIn profile
- Trusting an automated speed or power pilot can erode the crew's own feel for efficient operation; the company itself notes that human factors remain decisive
- The system depends on working sensors: if a torque sensor or fuel flow meter fails, no new curve is generated and performance quietly freezes at the last known setting
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
High, but the effort falls on the vendor rather than on the crew. Setup is an industrial retrofit: an electronics cabinet and a bridge HMI panel are installed aboard, wired to existing sensors and to the ship's propulsion control system, then commissioned during a sea trial of about five hours. Frugal technicians and marine technology partners carry out the work in roughly three days, one of them alongside the pier. No IT skills are required afterwards: operators set thrust with a button or an on-screen slider and enable the pilot. The algorithm then needs one to several months to converge.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Frugal SmartPropulsion
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What is Frugal SmartPropulsion?
What is included in a delivery?
Does it work with my existing vessel control system?
How much fuel can it save?
How long does installation take?
How quickly does the system reach its best performance?
Is safety affected?
What does it cost?
Is there a privacy policy or terms of service?
Who is behind the product?
Should you pick Frugal SmartPropulsion?
Frugal SmartPropulsion is a serious piece of industrial engineering rather than a piece of software you sign up for. The technical account it gives of itself is unusually detailed for a vendor site: Model Predictive Control combined with machine learning, a seeding sea trial, convex hulls bounding safe engine health, and a deliberate limit of one new propeller curve a day to avoid wear. The customer references are named and checkable — Royal Arctic Line, Uni-Tankers, Navigare Shipping, Torm and Smyril Line — and the case studies carry concrete numbers rather than slogans. The 2023 investment by Emerson, and the company's current status as a wholly owned Emerson subsidiary, add a level of durability that a small Aalborg engineering firm would not otherwise offer.
The reservations are about disclosure, not engineering. Nothing contractual is published: no terms, no privacy policy, no data processing agreement, and no mention at all of the GDPR from a company established in the European Union. No price, range or billing model appears anywhere. Hosting is described only as secured servers, with no jurisdiction named. And the company's own savings and payback claims disagree with one another across the site, the flyer and the 2025 brochure, which makes any single headline figure unreliable on its own.
The practical consequence is that everything material — price, data ownership, retention, hosting, the actual savings expected for your hull and propeller — has to be established in a commercial conversation. That is normal for capital equipment, but it means this listing can confirm what the system does and how it is installed, and very little about what you will pay or what happens to your data. One further oddity: the root address now redirects to Emerson's catalogue.
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