Rolls-Royce Launches New Battery System To Electrify Ships (electrek.co)

Rolls-Royce, a British power system company (not to be confused with the luxury automobile maker), is launching a new battery system to electrify ships. "Rolls-Royce now offers SAVe Energy, a cost competitive, highly efficient and liquid cooled battery system with a modular design that enables the product to scale according to energy and power requirements," the company said in a statement. "SAVe Energy comply with international legislations for low and zero emission propulsion systems." Electrek reports: The company has been working on battery systems for years, but the recent improvements in li-ion batteries are now resulting in a boom of electrification of ships. Andreas Seth, Rolls-Royce, EVP Electrical, Automation and Control for Commercial Marine, said the company expects to deploy more batteries next year than they did over the last 8 years combined: "The electrification of ships is building momentum. From 2010 we have delivered battery systems representing about 15 MWh in total. However now the potential deployment of our patent pending SAVe Energy in 2019 alone is 10-18 MWh."

Seth said that they are delivering the first system to Prestfjord as part of Norway's effort to electrify its maritime transport: "Battery systems have become a key component of our power and propulsions systems, and SAVe Energy is being introduced on many of the projects we are currently working on. This includes the upgrade programme for Hurtigruten's cruise ferries, the advanced fishing vessel recently ordered by Prestfjord and the ongoing retrofits of offshore support vessels. As a system provider we can find the best solution considering both installation and operational cost."

Comments

Just to clarify the company

[Anonymous Coward]

Rolls-Royce, the company, IS actually the 'power' company. The luxury automaker is now a licensed marque that is owned by BMW, but the name is only used by permission.

Re:Just to clarify the company

[whoever57]

Exactly, and the CEO is someone that people here should recognize: he used to be CEO of ARM Holdings.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I found a photo of your boat.

Re:Rolls Royce

[jpaine619]

Uh... they have made aircraft engines.. For ... a very very long time..

Re:Good idea

[110010001000]

That was just a minor issue. It will be fixed by an over-the-air update.

Re:Rolls Royce

[raburton]

I think you might be confusing this Rolls Royce company with... itself. There is only really one Rolls Royce company, they make jet engines, marine engines, nuclear submarine engines, etc. The only confusing thing is they don't make cars, Rolls Royce cars are just a subsidiary of BMW.

Re:Rolls Royce

[Attila Dimedici]

Considering that BMW ONLY owns the Rolls Royce trademark for cars, I would imagine that the Rolls Royce company wins the trademark dispute. This is especially true since when BMW originally purchased the automobile portion of ROlls Royce they neglected to purchase the right to use the trademark and had to negotiate that as a separate deal a few years later.

Re:Why?

[Nutria]

The only reason I can think of is that it lets you run the engines at only the most efficient RPM instead of having to throttle them up and down.

Hopefully someone will clarify.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Brett Buck]

Fanboys tend to be humorless douchebags when their ox is gored.

Re:Why?

[mrvan]

The batteries are meant primarily for ferries, which are especially suited for wired charging as they (1) have relatively short routes (2) between set points (3) with relatively frequent and long (un)loading delays, including generally a nightly downtime. So they can charge at night and top-up every time they (un)load passengers.

This means they can use generated electricity, which in Norway (the first customer of these ships) means hydro-electricity, reducing pollution (making the gov't happy) and apparently reducing costs by 80%.

Since the main drawback of all-electric transport is battery weight, it seems that ships, especially ferries and short-distance haulers, should be very well suited to electrification.

[For comparison, a random city car (VW UP) is 60 HP for about 1 ton.for A lorry seems to be about 500HP for at most 50 (metric) tons fully loaded, so about 10 HP per ton. A random ferry (https://www.teso.nl/nl/teso-mainmenu-70/schepen-mainmenu-106/dokter-wagemaker-mainmenu-107) is 4x1.8KW ~ 10kHP for 7k ton, or just over 1 HP per ton. So, the weight of the battery pack will be a lot less (relatively) to to total weight compared to cars or lorries]

Re:I expect they'll be as successful as electric c

[MightyMartian]

I agree. Who needs one of those new fangled horseless carriages; noisy, slow, break down a lot. A horse and buggy, boy, it worked for our fathers, grandfathers a long ways back. No need to invest in this troublesome new technology. Mark my words, in fifty years, no one will own these silly horseless carriages!

Re:I expect they'll be as successful as electric c

[drinkypoo]

they'll be as successful as electric cars

I think you're exactly right. Just like electric cars, they will become the desirable vehicle anywhere they are feasible. Short-haul ferry service, for example. It won't be all pure-EVs, though. The key to understanding who will want this lies in the following sentence:

"SAVe Energy comply with international legislations for low and zero emission propulsion systems."

Ports around the world are banning the burning of bunker fuel. How do you solve this problem? You can carry multiple kinds of fuel, or you can use a hybrid system. You don't need full speed within ports, so the energy requirements are far lower there. You charge the batteries while underway, then you switch to electric while within the region controlled by the port. Once you've left, it's back on the bunker fuel. This solves the problem of poor air quality in the port itself, at least for the pollution produced by ships. The other source of poor air quality in ports is from semi-trucks doing port drayage. Anti-idling laws have improved that problem (especially in California) and hybrids and hydrogen vehicles will essentially solve it completely.

So you're right, we're not going to see the ICE depart shipping any time soon. However, we are going to see electrification of basically all ships, just as we're going to see electrification of basically all automobiles.

In the longer-term, floating solar swarms can be installed along trade routes currently followed by container ships, and used to recharge them in mid-journey. Larger and larger percentages of motive power can be supplied to hybrid ships over time, until they are finally using their ICEs only for emergencies or in inclement weather.

Re:Why?

[EETech1]

It lets you size the engine for most efficient cruising, then you use the batteries when accelerating, or whenever you need a burst of power.

You can recover energy when decelerating, or running the engine at less than peak efficiency.

When docking or headed to port, you can go all electric to eliminate emissions close to shore.

Re:I expect they'll be as successful as electric c

[blindseer]

In the longer-term, floating solar swarms can be installed along trade routes currently followed by container ships, and used to recharge them in mid-journey. Larger and larger percentages of motive power can be supplied to hybrid ships over time, until they are finally using their ICEs only for emergencies or in inclement weather.

Or, we could keep those solar collectors on shore and use them to produce synthetic fuels. Then the fuel can be poured into any existing ship that burns diesel fuel, with no sulfur like in bunker fuel or low grade marine fuel. That means no stopping in the middle of their route, no dangerous at sea recharges, and no fancy batteries that don't exist yet.

Waiting for battery powered ships to become economically viable is, quite literally in this case, waiting at port for a ship that may never come. We've been synthesizing hydrocarbons for a very long time. This hasn't been done to make fuel, except in times of war, due to the costs. It has been used for a long time now to make high performance lubricants. The US Navy has a program to both bring down the cost and scale up production.
https://www.zmescience.com/res...

Which is more likely to be successful sooner? These solar swarms of recharging ships for cargo carriers that do not yet exist? Or, a fuel synthesis process that allows the use of most any source of electricity to produce fuels that work in every ship at sea, and every plane in the air, right now?

Another alternative for large "green" ships is the use of nuclear power. This is a technology that has been at sea for decades. A technology that 60 years ago, almost to the day, sailed to the North Pole. A technology used in Russian icebreakers. If you want to discuss "inclement weather" then I believe that nuclear power passed that test a long time ago.

Re:I expect they'll be as successful as electric c

[blindseer]

People have been working on electric propulsion on sea (and land) for over 100 years and it's still not competing with nuclear, wind, or diesel. You think this will change all that quickly? Even if the problems on this are solved tomorrow this will still have to be brought up to mass production and that will not only take a long time but still face resistance over fears of performance, long term economics, and so on.

What we know does work is nuclear power. It's as "green" as anything and has had 60 years of experience to prove it viable. There is an existing capacity to build these ships right now. It might take a while to ramp up production but this shouldn't be too difficult. The engineering behind naval reactors might take 21st century computing and technology but the actual construction is something from the early 20th century. Making the reactors is one small step up from hammer and tongs steelworks.

Another long standing technology is synthetic fuels. This can be synthesized hydrocarbons, which again is 100 years old, and can use energy from most any heat and/or electrical source. Synthetic ammonia is a good choice for fuel, another century old technology. These fuels will burn in existing engines, with little or no modification. Any resistance to this should be easily overcome since it requires nothing or next to nothing done by the ship operators to adopt.

Battery electric propulsion still faces a lot of technological hurdles. The problems with nuclear propulsion, or synthetic fuels, are largely problems of policy. We can change the political rules that keep these ships from sailing. Changing the rules of physics and/or economics are far greater challenges.

We can keep working on electric ships. I'm certainly not going to stop you. What should we do until these ships arrive? What do we do if this technology never gets beyond the prototype? I say we try nuclear power and synthetic fuels. We can do that today and with century old technology.

Headline

[mentil]

Rolls-Royce Launches New Battery System To Electrify Ships

That'll take care of those stowaways!