Abstract: As the core system of the entire ship, the safety and reliability of the power system directly affects the safe navigation of the ship, and effective fault monitoring and diagnosis technology is an important means of ensuring navigation safety. First, by analyzing the research progress of intelligent algorithms and fault diagnosis by scholars at home and abroad, the intelligent fault diagnosis of a marine power plant is divided into three parts – data signal acquisition, data feature extraction and fault identification and prediction – and the problems and challenges faced by intelligent algorithms in the fault diagnosis of marine power plants are summarized. Then, combining the characteristics of intelligent algorithms, the future development trends of intelligent fault diagnosis technology for marine power plants are discussed. Finally, it is proposed to carry out in-depth research on the establishment of a cloud-based data monitoring system, the establishment of a database and the mining of monitoring data, in order to lay the foundation for the practical engineering application of the intelligent diagnosis of marine power plants.