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Solar-Powered Boat Carries 8.5 Tons of Lithium-Ion Batteries
bshell writes "The Verge has a great photo-essay about Tûranor PlanetSolar, the first boat to circle the globe with solar power. 'The 89,000 kg (nearly 100 ton) ship needs a massive solar array to capture enough energy to push itself through the ocean. An impressive 512 square meters (roughly 5,500 square feet) of photovoltaic cells, to be exact, charge the 8.5 tons of lithium-ion batteries that are stored in the ship's two hulls.' The boat is currently in NYC. Among other remarkable facts, the captain (Gérard d'Aboville) is one of those rare individuals who solo-rowed across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, journeys that took 71 and 134 days, respectively. The piece has a lot of detail about control systems and design."
Wouldn't it be cheating if he rows across the ocean in a solar-powered boat?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
A Hindenburg that floats.
Saltwater and batteries!?!?!
Anyone have an estimate of how much energy it takes to produce and transport 17,000 pounds of lithium ion batteries?
Is this really an efficient solar use compared to, say, sail?
Flammable fuel in an oxygen rich atmosphere?!
I'm sorry but this is complete nonsense.Francis Chichester sailed around the world under solar power in 1966.
I suspect it was a lot "greener" to build his boat that this.
No wonder Jeremy Clarkson talks about the "green monster"
They could save a lot of tonnage, and add other perks, if they swapped those lithium-ions for lithium-polymers ;)
with a retarded human to drive it...
I will call it Solar Sail [input name of first girlfriend].
Solar Sail Titanic!
You could use the air currents that solar energy creates naturally to push a boat through the water, by erecting a large semi-rigid surface to catch those currents and transfer energy to the hull. By angling this surface, you could allow the hull to move in a direction different from the air current itself.
If the current happen to disappear for a short time, and that was a problem, you could use a small motor/battery/solar array to keep the boat in motion.
Of course, wind powered boats have been circumnavigating the globe since the 16th century, and can be faster, too. So this is interesting, but not exactly that impressive as a demonstration of eco-friendly sea travel.
Clearly they were working on a fishing vessel to go out trolling for engineers. (And quite successfully too it seems)
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
"Captain Gérard d'Aboville is piloting the SolarPlanet for its current voyage from Miami to Norway. Earlier in his life he solo-rowed across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, journeys that took 71 and 134 days, respectively."
It WAS in NYC, prior to the post. It was in Boston when posted as being in NY.
Some of the most abundant elements are now somehow precious resources? aka, Silicon and Lithium.
For crying out loud, why such a stupidity - we already had sail ships in the 1600s and 1700s and 1800s that had same size sails as this stillborn, and some of them were really good. Powering this by li-ion and photostatic is an excessive waste of precious resources and should be considered criminal negligence against the future of mankind.
If you want to wage war against anyone wasting precious resources, good luck, this ship is minor leagues compared to others. But I don't think they are trying to replace sails. It's not even claiming to be practical. It's cool that they don't need anything but the sun for powering on-board systems and locomotion. Sometime in the future when battery and photo-voltaic technology improves it will become more practical.
The first horse-less carriages probably seemed wasteful, but look at them now.
The thing I was most curious about was the total wattage the solar panels can produce: 93,500 watts. It takes 2 days to charge the lithium batteries even at 93.5 kW.
Better known as 318230.
This boat that the TFS says is currently in NYC has also been in Boston Harbor all week.
It is scaring all the sailboats with its zero-emission powers.
I am going to hack the shit out of him once I finish pwnzoring 127.0.0.1
I saw this in the news last week... I didn't think at the time to question to weight of the batteries, but it occurs to me that using a catamaran design is suboptimal. You might as well go with a monohull, and design it around the batteries as ballast.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Not only is it a waste of resources - it's inefficient, and by that I mean a sailing ship the same size carries more cargo and moves twice as fast.
...when the wind blows.
This has 512 m^2 solar array, incoming sun at directly overhead is roughly 1 kW / m^2, assume solar panel efficiency of 15%. This is a total power of about 76 kW or about 100 HP when the sun is directly overhead. Averaged over a 24 hour day, this is maybe 20-25 HP. 89,000 kg of lithium battery at 200 Wh / kg is 17.8 MWh. This would take 234 hours to charge with the sun directly overhead. That is about 40 days of clear sky charging, assuming you are not running the propeller at the same time. Something is fishy here. Sounds like he charges in port, then runs to the next port on solar plus battery (otherwise there is no need for this large battery / solar cell ratio). Then he repeats. Is my math wrong, or is this story a bit strange?
And what would you think of a "horseless carriage" that, er, relied on a horse somewhere in the design? Seems like they are over-complicating a very simple, very old concept with modern gadgetry. Just because the propeller was invented does not mean that absolutely the only way to move a ship is via the propeller. What's next, a nuclear powered rowboat?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Solar-Powered Boat. That Sounds More Eco friendly . It's Very Good For Our Nature
The solar ship only works if there is enough sun shine.
I wonder where the sweet spot is in terms of efficiency. Carrying lots of batteries lets you more consistently provide power to your engines. At night, obviously, but also during cloud cover. But it also makes you a lot heavier. On land, that would mean you'd need to spend a lot more power to move yourself. Maybe not as big of a deal for craft that travel in water?
I'm curious what sort of time one could make with a small(ish) craft with a small(ish) battery that combines solar powered electric engines with traditional wind power.
Is it even a remotely good idea to keep that many batteries in a single location? Are lithium ion batteries really that stable? I thought they can be prone to rupture, etc?
No, they still seem wasteful - they just ALSO seem like a necessity in today's modern world.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
> energy to build panels is just like ethanol, another energy shell game where the losers are us.
I'll gloss over that solar panels and ethanol do have a net pay off in energy but that isn't the most important factor. With oil, the amount of energy to make the motor+refine+transport (fuel+infrastructure) to site+motor efficiency... consumes the majority of the energy in the fuel to begin with (over 3/4 is lost.) So if the batteries+Solar panels can be made to be more convenient and reduce the risk of pollution... then it can still be a net payoff. Similar with the Ethanol, the oil energy inputs to ethanol from farming is very small %, the majority is natural gas in the corn->oil conversion, and since ethanol is still much easier to store/use/burn in a car (LnG works well, but it takes up more than half the energy to compress to liquid, thus even more in-efficient than using natural gas to make Ethanol.)
We should be investigating the use of wind energy for moving ships. Perhaps there is some way (probably very complicated!) in which we could avoid converting the wind energy to electrical energy before converting it into propulsion. I have a feeling we might be able to create some zero emission ships that way.
85 tons is the displacement of the boat. 11.7 tons is the weight of the battery, so the charging time and capacity are less than you think. Where do these ominous HP come from in your calculation, anyways? How many HPs do the electrical outlets in your house have?
Of course, you could have found and translated the Wikipedia entry at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BBranor_PlanetSolar, which gives the capacity of the battery as 1130kWh, the weight of the batteries as 11.7 tons, and some more information.
Quite a few boats have circled the globe with much greener propulsion.
FTFA :-
"The 89,000 kg (nearly 100 ton) ship"
.."
.. of photovoltaic cells"
/. -ed). So I guess you mean large. I'd be more impressed if the area was small, which it is not
Why not just say 85 tonnes?
".. to capture enough energy to push itself through the ocean
You do not need to dumb things down on this site, Slashdotters are not all daft. You mean "to propel it", and you mean "power" not "energy" here.
"An impressive 512 square meters
Impressively large, impressively small or impressively what we would expect? That sounds a lot on a 85t vessel, which is tiny for a "ship" - unless it is like a raft or catamaran, it would only be about 30m long and 6m wide - so the cells are about 3x the deck area; where do they put them? (the link is
Then it wouldn't need 8.5 tonnes of batteries!
An oil tanker powered by solar - definitely a double-take moment.
(it does make sense, actually - oil is better for vehicles which actually *require* the energy density in their fuel, but it's still funny)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's running Windows XP
It could be taking off either way, or sinking, or whatever Clippie chooses
"The 89,000 kg (nearly 100 ton) ship"
89,000 kg is nearly 90 ton. Did they add an extra 10 ton to impress people who don't understand the metric system? :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails
The SkySails propulsion system consists of a large foil kite, an electronic control system for the kite and an automatic system to retract the kite. The system bears similarities to kitesurfing.... A ship equipped with the current SkySails could consume from 10 to 35% less fuel.
Who else when reading the title thought it was an article for Raspberry Pi's Fish Pi? http://fishpi.org/
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
The batteries can power the ship for 72 hours
It really screams at the need for better battery technology. Come on Energizer!? 8.5 tonnes to keep a boat going and going and going?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Although it has a couple days of battery power in reserve any time the sun isn't shining..