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Swiss Solar Powered Catamaran Finishes 'Round the World Tour

Posted by timothy on from the honestly-they-were-just-sick-of-mountains dept.

First time accepted submitter wokie78 writes "The PlanetSolar, a Swiss solar powered catamaran, has just arrived to Monaco (French original), its initial port of departure, after finishing its voyage around the world which it started in September 2010. Its five-member crew completed a 60,006 km trip fully powered by 537 square meters of solar panels, which produced from 500 to 600 kw/h in fair weather — which meant it could go for 300 km on a single charge. Everything on the boat was solar powered."

6 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Impressive, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm pretty sure that sailing boats have been doing that with only wind power for many centuries.

    1. Re:Impressive, but by gstrickler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't know why you were modded down, but you're correct.

      Nice demonstration. It's cool that they did it, but it's completely impractical.

      It would have made more sense to use a combination of sails and solar. A hybrid solar/sail would be far more practical, and would have completed the trip much faster.

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  2. What a load of muddled energy unit drivel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "537 sq metres of panels which produced from 500 to 600 kw/h in fair weather"
    No it produced 500 to 600 kW, whether it did it for hours or not depends on how long the "fair weather" lasted.
    "which meant it could go for 300km on a single charge" - meaningless. Perhaps they are talking about batteries. Who knows.
    If so they are saying (somewhat unrelated to the peak power generating capacity of the solar panels) that their batteries can store 500kw/hrs. and so can be charged in an hour?? Who can tell. And perhaps they are able to run (at some percentage of peak speed) for 300km.

    Of course none of this tells us anything really, since what you need for this to be "remarkable" would be to run much faster than the wind, otherwise I'd much prefer sailing.

  3. Re:kW/h? by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.planetsolar.org/the-boat

    Surface area of solar modules: 537 m2
    PV panel efficiency: 18.8 %
    Installed PV power: 93.5 kW (127.0 HP)
    *Puissance moteur maximale: 120 kW
    Average engine consumption: 20 kW (26.8 HP)

    *Maximum motor output

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    o0t!
  4. Even better by gr8_phk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A company I worked for did integration work on a hybrid electric sail boat. With electric props you can charge the battery from the wind while sailing - use the motors as generators. They produced enough power to run all electrical loads on the boat including air conditioning with a very small loss in speed. In dock you may want some solar to keep it charged.

    1. Re:Even better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's also towing generators for sailboats that have been around forever. When you have a nice amount of wind and are cruising along you throw the generator off the back on a line and it charges the batteries as it's towed along. They're very common amongst boaties.