A battery-powered boat covered in solar panels may be plying China’s coastal waters and estuaries in less than a year.
Faced with crippling traffic on land, China is turning to the water to ease congestion in major cities. BMT Nigel Gee, based in Southampton, UK announced earlier this week they won the contract to design and build an all-electric 150 passenger ferry destined for use in China. Construction on the 85 foot long, 28 foot wide catamaran will begin later this year, and a maiden voyage is set for the middle of 2012.
The vessel will rely on a Vanadium Redox Battery (VRB), a flow-type battery that’s good at providing large amounts of power. They’re usually used to store energy produced by wind farms or solar arrays, and they can’t be damaged if they’re stored while depleted. While VRBs are large, they can also be “refilled” without a charger simply by replacing the electrolyte.
Those batteries power an electric drive motor that can propel the boat up to a speed of 10 knots, and can be recharged while in use by solar panels mounted on the ferry’s roof. We’ll have to wait to find out the boat’s range and how long a recharge will take, but infrequent ferry operation may be ideal for an electric boat, allowing it to recharge while awaiting passengers.
While other electric watercraft have been proposed, promised battery-powered ferries have yet to materialize. Hybrid boats sail in California and New York, and solely solar-powered research vessels have been built, but the world’s ferries still burn fossil fuels.
The as-yet unnamed Chinese boat appears to be quite close to production, however, with construction beginning later this year. BMT says their expertise in building low resistance hulls helped, but building an electric boat isn’t all smooth sailing.
“This design has been an interesting challenge as we needed to balance the weight of the batteries against the vessel performance in order to ensure that a practical ferry service can be provided ,” said BMT technical director Ed Dudson.
Image: BMT Nigel Gee
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