The auxiliary engines (generators) of a vessel provide the ship with the required electric power for its operation. The system therefore greatly resembles to a power producing facility, operating continuously during the vessel's voyage. It is therefore important that the installation is reliable. The modern controls for such installations augment their reliability but also their efficiency and economic operation. Modern controls, will among others provide the vessel with:

• Isochronous operation of the installation
• Automatic parallel operation and synchronization between all gen-sets of the installation
• Automatic load sharing of active and reactive power between all generators
• Full protection of all gen-sets
• Absolute and complete control, information and management of the installation through state of the art monitoring systems.
• Proven reliability and availability of the installation with extensive fail safe alternative operational scenarios for containing functional problems
• Fully automated gen-set control and automated start-up procedures;

The emergency generator, usually independent from the auxiliary engines, can also be included in the control system of the power plant of the vessel, to start automatically upon a blackout and support the main gen-sets to restart their operation after the reason that caused the blackout is corrected.