Solar-Powered Boat Carries 8.5 Tons of Lithium-Ion Batteries 164
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."
Isn't that cheating? (Score:5, Funny)
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Ever try to circumnavigate the globe along the equator? That's right, you can't. There's a big difference between 5 weeks sailing as the crow flies across the Atlantic, and sailing all the way around the world.
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Of for fuck's sake: lighten up! If you had read the article or any other news related to this project, you would know that the creators of the boat aren't looking to pioneer a new mode of transportation. They all recognize that sailing is a much more effective way of having a "solar-powered" boat. The makers of the Solar Impulse airplane aren't trying to replace commercial aviation, either. These are technology demonstrators, like multi-million dollar concept cars; t
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Because almost nothing new ever gets done otherwise. Maybe they aren't appropriate for the application today in a one-off fashion, but who can say about tomorrow? And even if the application isn't appropriate, but the integration of the technology is sound, who's to say that it can't be used in a different application? You can get far with thought experiments and designs on
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Yes, because no sailor ever thought of that, ever, in the 8000 years of boat design history.
Here you go AC. Educate thyself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anchor [wikipedia.org]
Re:Isn't that cheating? (Score:5, Funny)
No. Cheating would be poking a hole in the back of the battery packs, waiting for the seawater to hit the lithium and taking off like a rocket.
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If you get in a big barrel, with enough food and water to last 2 months in Gran Canaria someone will find you in 7+ weeks in the Caribbean. Current does the work.
Anyone who's actually crossed the Atlantic knows this. too many ignorant bystanders.
There are simple answers to seemingly complex problems. The first step to solving a problem is understanding.
sounds dangerous actually (Score:2)
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?
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Lithium ion batteries are stable so long as you don't actively damage them (physically or by over charging, or discharging at an excessive rate). They are only prone to rupture if you physically rupture them (or abuse them by overcharging or discharging at an excessive rate).
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He bitch-slaps Popeye every day right after he has breakfast.
What Bat Villian designed this boat?!?! (Score:3)
Saltwater and batteries!?!?!
Re: Same guy who made every car, plane and trains (Score:2, Insightful)
Flammable fuel in an oxygen rich atmosphere?!
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There are good reasons to use the lowest tech required to do the job. Sure, they be trying to make some sort of point, but I'm sure there are more useful ways to do that.
Re:What Bat Villian designed this boat?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
How much oil would it take to move a boat round the world? I would say 8,500kg of batteries isn't a lot for a 100,000kg boat.
Re:What Bat Villian designed this boat?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most ships need ballast anyhow. Not clear that there's any net weight penalty at all from carrying the batteries.
Re:What Bat Villian designed this boat?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
square hulls don't require ballast, they're stable by nature of the shape. Neither do catamarans or trimarans, they're stable for much the same reason that square hulls are: edge displacement equals or is greater than centre displacement.
An ASCII demonstration:
\/ : single-keel trangular hull. Not very stable because at each point on the hull a different upward pressure acts, resulting in something that requires ballast in the bottom to keep it pointed the right way and/or....
Y : triangular hull with sail. Only stable because of the sail (which has ballast in it). Without it, it's about as stable as a log in white water.
\_/ : still a triangular hull, this time with a double keel. More stable than the single keel (above), but think of the small rowboats one would use on a lake. Obviously the wider the hull in relation to the length, the more stable it's going to be, but it ain't gonna be capsize-proof. Would still require ballast if it's doing anything other than glass-still laking.
|_| : square hull. Very stable because the same upward pressure acts on every point of the hull bottom. Wider=capsize proofing. If you could make a double wardrobe watertight, it would be brilliant as a rescue/evac boat in case of disastrous flooding, because it would hold as much human weight as the total volume of water displaced (40 cubic feet to an inch of the side, for argument's sake, that's 1.13 cubic metres - that's over a ton of water, or a dozen to fifteen full grown adults) and still be rock solid stable.
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I don't understand your premise.
I'd have expected stability to be defined by the question "as the boat heels, is there a moment to return it upright?"
That seems a natural definition of stability, ie. the boat stays stable, ie. the boat stays upright.
Why would "every point on hull experiences equal pressure" be a definition of stability? Or if it isn't, what definition are you using?
Re:What Bat Villian designed this boat?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
you're only correct if youre talking about a hull riding smack on the surface and not extending beneath it. ie, you're ignoring CG, displacement, and actual bouyancy dynamics and vastly oversimplifying the problem.
the bouyancy forces acting on a hull dont care if they are acting on the angled side of a V hull or the flat bottom of...well a flat bottomed boat.
the surface area of the horizontal plane of the boat hull where it intersects the waterline is effectively a "flat hull", or the "area upon which the bouyancy forces act", for any boat, regardless of whether the hull is a perfect square or a perfect circle or inverted triangle.
two hulls with different shapes but the same surface area of that plane (and the same displacement and CG are equivealent) will have the same bouyancy forces acting upwards on the hull.
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also: catamarans are "not stable for the same reason that square hulls are". that statement alone shows a basic misunderstanding of boat design and simple physics/statics.
a catamaran is stable because if you imagine one side unsupported (such as a wave dropping out frm under it) you have a CG which extended beyond the vessels "base", ie, the remaining outrigger. this causing a natural tipping moment until the unsupported outrigger comes into contact with teh water again.
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"Only stable because of the sail (which has ballast in it). "
seriously wtf. cant believe i missed this. sails dont have ballast.
you know nothing about boats Jon Snow
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do you think sails only appear on masts? Dafuq?
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a sail is a broad flat surface designed to resist or capture the energy from a force such as WIND OR CURRENT.
Fuck's sake...
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The boat is interesting, but to me mainly in the sense of where hybrid-electric propulsion can go. PV is a fairly impractical choice for 100% of power, but showing it as possible moves the state of the art further. The lithium batteries would scare the shit out of me though in the middle of the Atlantic. Sure you can have fire suppression and you have at least two independent strings... which is arguably more redundancy than a sailboat with one mast and no engine... But...
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I don't completely agree with either parent or GP: hybrid drives are gaining popularity for a number of reasons, and the water viscosity makes regenerating viable despite the prop. FischerPanda used to hae some good material, but I can't find it anymore on their website. Basically, you get a 1kt penalty when running at 8kt if I recall correctly, and you can charge a good size battery bank in a couple hours. You also have a system with plenty of power and don't need an auxiliary engine when cruising.
For
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so you make the front pointy. No biggy. All you have to do is cut the water and move it out of the way as you go. Or (and this is a kickarse idea), gather enough speed so you actually ride above most of the water as a result of upward pressure buildup at the bow (a phenomenon known as hydroplaning - great for boats, not so great for road vehicles). It helps if the front of the vessel is angled to encourage this to happen.
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That's exactly what it is. He knows nothing about boats of the physics behind them.
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Meh... I was gonna mod this thread. Bugger it.
Anyhow, I'm glad you mentioned that. I was going to add something similar. Seeing as you seem to know something about boats...
Another thing that made me wonder is, isn't this a three hulled vessel? Yet, from the summary, the batteries are kept in the "ships two hulls." I am forced to wonder where the third one went but, by doing so, I demonstrate that I've clearly violated the rules of Slashdot and read the article.
Ah well... Perhaps the editor will come along a
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The picture seems (to me) to indicate that it is in the water?
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But mass isn't the only way to generate a righting moment. Catamaran and trimaran designs eschew ballast. They generate their righting moment by increasing the lever arm - they put pontoons as far from the axis of roll as possible. As the ship rolls, one pontoon gets dunked further into the water,
Re:What Bat Villian designed this boat?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Striking that in a community of self-identified "geeks" and "techies" that the notion of "proof of concept" would be so difficult to grasp.
"Big deal, they walked around on the moon, but they had to wear big heavy protective suits to do it, so clearly, we shouldn't have a space program. And so what that the Mars Rover is tooling around on the surface of Mars. It moves really slowly so we shouldn't do any more Mars exploration until we can bring a Ford Explorer and get around like Jesus intended, with internal combustion engines burning refined oil."
Here's a group that will embrace any new technology, stand in line to buy an Apple iWristwatch, but the mere mention of anything having to do with research into energy from any source besides Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Nukes and they dig in their heels like somebody's trying to take away their binkie.
Sometimes I'm surprised they're not holding out until their laptops can run on a two-stroke engine.
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Sometimes I'm surprised they're not holding out until their laptops can run on a two-stroke engine.
I slashdot from a difference engine, you insensitive clod!
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Sailing ships require one highly trained person and several numbsculls. Generally, numbsculls are cheap. A modern rig can be sailed by a single person most of the time, and only requires extra crew members when the sails need adjusting (probably 30 minutes once or twice a day
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Sailing ships can be becalmed for days or even weeks. This is more of a problem the bigger the ship, as the more wind you need to start it moving again. Even at the best of times, their speed is highly variable, depending on wind speed and direction - if it's a head wind then they need to tack, which can significantly reduce their maximum straight-line speed, if it's a run or a reach then they can go faster. This makes them tricky from an economic perspective, where you need to book dock time well in adv
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I'm so disappointed nobody picked up on the reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3obvJQ0blfQ [youtube.com]
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It's lithium ION, not lithium metal. You know how sodium reacts with water, yet you still put sodium ion on your chips (french fries), because you're using an ionic compound of sodium (sodium chloride). Similarly, lithium ion batteries contain no metallic lithium, only stable lithium compounds.
The violent reactions that lithium ion batteries have when exposed to water are all to do with very high electrical currents. Any battery or electricity storage mechanism that has the ability to discharge these high c
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I am not entirely sure what you're talking about. Perhaps you goofed and posted this in the wrong spot? I do that but I'm usually pretty wasted at the time.
I suppose now would be the time to say, "It happens to the best of us." I suspect that isn't true however. It is sort of like, well... Have you ever noticed that it is usually a completely retarded idea or vocalization that results in someone saying, "Great minds think alike!" Anyhow, I doubt it happens to the best of us. It happens to me when I'm comple
Net Energy Use? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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Classic Rube Goldberg machine. "You know that story about how NASA spent millions designing a pen that could write in space?..."
Re:Net Energy Use? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am hoping that you know this but I am compelled to respond to your post. I feel like I'm potentially preaching to the choir here but, well, it could be possible that you don't know this. If you don't then, well, I feel sad for you but not in a bad way. The quote is pretty common... The quote is also usually finished with a statement about how the USSR just used a pencil.
The reality is that NASA didn't develop (or pay for the development) of the space pen at all. It was developed by Fisher, at their own expense, and with no guarantee that it would be purchased by NASA for use in space. What had happened was that NASA had paid way too much money for some mechanical pencils and the public found out about the expensive pencils and all hell broke loose. Keep in mind how much we were spending on the space race at the time, be sure to convert those dollars to today's dollars for a true comparison. Americans were well and truly pissed and justifiably so.
Citation [scientificamerican.com]
What the above link sort of touches on is the trouble with the idea of using a pencil, which is something you hadn't mentioned at all but I'll bring it up in order to be complete. One of the reasons that I understand a pencil is a bad idea (while sort of mentioned in the article they don't go into in at any depth and don't cover this specifically) is that every time you write there are microscopic fragments of graphite that break away. In a weightless environment they can go all over the place and graphite is also a very good conductor of electricity. The various electronics were very sensitive at the time and while most systems had a backup any point of failure was seen as a bad thing. The small bits of graphite could conceivably float away, enter a computer system, and cause a short - which wouldn't necessarily result in a fire but could possibly be a Bad Thing® and *could* potentially cause a fire in and of itself. (I'm not sure how well pencils themselves burn or how much the flammability of the pencil itself was a concern that actually was for NASA to be honest.)
That is, as near as I can remember, how the story was relayed to me by someone who worked on the earlier Apollo missions. The conversation was over more than one beer (and about a lot more than that) so I may have missed something. The linked citation pretty much goes along with the story as he detailed it.
If I may digress a bit... I was not alive for the earliest launches but I do recall watching the first humans on the moon on television. My parents told me the cliché about how I could do that someday but I never really wanted to walk on the moon. It did change me though. It made me interested in the technology and the computers that got them there. I didn't want to walk on the moon but I did want to work one of those giant beeping machines with the interesting dials and gauges on the ground and maybe visit space for a little while just to experience weightlessness but I wouldn't want to stay there for long. Not every little boy wanted to be an astronaut when we grew up, some of us wanted to play with the machines that went beep instead. And, well, that was me. I never did get to play with NASA's beeping machines but I've was in front of a computer for pretty much all of my professional life and still sit in front of one now that I'm retired.
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mod up
Re:Net Energy Use? (Score:5, Informative)
Is this really an efficient solar use compared to, say, sail?
Moving heavy loads by sea is very efficient. You don't see "container-planes" for a reason. The buoyancy from the displaced water does the lifting, you just move it.
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*cough* http://www.ups.com/aircargo/using/services/services/domestic/svc-containers.html [ups.com]
You were good up until that and just fine after that. We *do* see container planes. They're used quite often when there is no ocean to cross or speed is more important than costs.
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The heirarchy is: ships > trains > trucks > planes
Planes deliver small loads at a very high speed and very high cost. They also get used when the destination is completely inaccessible to all other modes of transport.
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the technology's there, why not use it? Why not use *both*, indeed?
As someone else has already pointed out, you don't need to lift the load in water, the water does that: the vessel finds a point where its mass equals the mass of water displaced and there finds a neutral buoyancy. All you need to do then, is push it with enough force to overcome hydrostatic friction and send it on its way. 10% of an oceangoing vessel for fuel is a stupendous amount of deadweight. Most tankers have *tiny* fuel tanks - often
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1. It's a proof of concept, a way to develop the technology into something useful.
2. The energy required to produce the batteries would be better compared to the energy required to power a diesel engined boat. You have to compare over the total lifetime of the batteries as well, because once built the fuel is basically free.
I imagine in future we will see large container ships, which are already one of the most efficient ways of moving stuff around, come fitted with solar arrays and maybe kites to provide s
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Nice try.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BBranor_PlanetSolar [wikipedia.org]
Displacement: 85 tons, of which >10% batteries and "very limited" cargo capacity
Engine max power: 140 kW (2x60+2x10)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_M%C3%A6rsk [wikipedia.org] (to pick something big but not brand new)
Tonnage: 109.000 tons deadweight
Engine: 56,800 kW
So the "proof of concept" is a ship that is a good 1000 times smaller and has 500 times less engine power.
Was his solo rowing across the Atlantic a proof of concept as well, evoking a future in w
Alternative technology? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Alternative technology? (Score:4, Funny)
But what if you wanted to move into the air current? You'd have to wait for the direction to change. It'll never catch on.
vs. Wind Power (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wind power will never be efficient/reliable enough to enable large transport vessels to use it exclusively.
This demonstrates that Solar+Batteries has a possibility of doing so.
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why not use sails + engines instead. There are real ships from the 19th century that did that, one was over 600' long and laid cable.
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Wind power is solar power. Why put expensive solar collectors on the boat itself, when you can let the ocean collect the solar energy for free, and siphon that power off of the wind it creates.
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How fast does that sailboat go when there is no wind?
Commercial transport ships can't afford to sit around and wait for favourable wins. This technology may not improve enough or scale up well enough to become commercially viable for large-scale use for commercial vessels, but it has a much better chance than all-wind powered (i.e. better than none).
Also, diesel and other fossil fuels are also solar power if you really want to get technical about it.
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Did you RTFA? Despite covering the entire ship with 18% efficient solar panels, it produces a whopping 27 hp and averages only 5 knots. The fastest open-water sailboat [wikipedia.org] can go more than 10x faster.
Large ships like tankers only go about 12 knots. I'll agree that this isn't quite there, and it remains to be seen if it can be scaled up. I think that as scales go up the amount of power should go down relative to size. Otherwise if it takes 8 tons of batteries in a 100 ton ship just imagine what it will take to move a 550kton tanker.
Biggest issue with sails of course is being caught becalmed. People used to die from that...
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It may well be easier to integrate into large transport ships though. Something like an oil tanker has a large surface area that could be covered with PV panels and provide extra propulsion to supplement the diesel engines.
Also sails don't provide any electrical energy, which in some applications (e.g. floating laboratory, drone boat) could be very useful.
Why is it that on Slashdot if any new technology doesn't replace all existing ones in every imaginable application for very possible user it must be worth
Oh, the irony (Score:2)
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)
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handy when the winds die down though. beats having to get the men up on and deck and begin rowing.
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Storks that got lost?
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There have been ships capable of navigating the high seas, 5500 years ago!
So? Circumnavigating is a much harder feat. Glancing at discussion on it, apparently it takes one now about two to ten years to do it now, including careful planning to avoid dangerous storm seasons and human-based perils.
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There have been ships capable of navigating the high seas, 5500 years ago!
Er is that the point of view of academics whose closest contact with the ocean is when they take a bath? Yeah I'd like to see one of those ancient vessels in an average storm. I have sailed, and believe me you quickly realize how easy it is to visit the bottom of the ocean.
Just because they didn't, doesn't mean they couldn't. Actually, it probably does mean that. While there is evidence that ancient peoples were capable of incredibly long trips - the proof of which being the colonization of Pacific islan
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Most of the more distant islands were colonised during small ice ages, when it was possible to walk much of the distance and people had to move a lot because food was scarce. There was thought to be a land bridge from South-East Asia to South America well after homo sapiens came along, and getting from Europe to North America via Iceland and Greenland wasn't such a massive journey for a lost Viking ship aiming for the islands around the north of Scotland.
For a long time, the limiting factor was the amou
Wattage (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
10.3.250.11 (Score:4, Funny)
Suboptimal (Score:3)
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.
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that is a buttload of deadweight for a boat.
20 HP average? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Your capacity estimate of the batteries must be way too high. They state it takes 2 days to charge the lithium batters.
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Length: 31 m Width: 15 m Height: 6,30 m Draft: 1,55 m Weight: 89 t Average speed: 5 knots (9.25 km/h) Surface area of solar modules: 516 m2 PV panel efficiency: 18.8% Installed PV power: 93.5 kW (127.0 HP) Maximal engine power: 120 kW Average engine consumption: 20 kW (26.8 HP)
Your figure of 89t refers to the total ship weight, not battery weight. Your calculations are out by an order of magnitude. The claimed recharge time is two days.
Read Wikipedia first. (Score:2)
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 [wikipedia.org], which gives the capacity of the battery as 1130kWh, the weight of the batteries as 11.7 tons, and some more information.
huh (Score:2)
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 engine
alternative energy (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Yes using oats and other gains for over land travel using this thing called a "horse". For multiple traveler capacity scientists have come up with a device called a "buggy".
The best part is the the transport itself can be used as a foodstuff, and is a renewable resource, and the "buggy" itself is recyclable!
Its a miracle!
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the biggest reason sailing fell out of favor is ship size. as freighters get biogger and bigger, the sail needed to move them gets proportionately bigger. can you imagine the sails needed for a modern megatanker? the ballast needed to keep it stable when it heels over? container ships for that matter cant heel, lest the containers fall off (more than already do)
Green? (Score:2)
Quite a few boats have circled the globe with much greener propulsion.
Impressive? (Score:2)
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
Cool but (Score:2)
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?
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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"
Ferdinant Magellan did it in 1520. (Wind power is solar power, conveniently converted to a form more amenable to pushing ships.)
Re:This is stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Ferdinant Magellan did it in 1520.
No, Magellan only made it as far as the Philippines and then he was killed. It was Juan Sebastian Elcano [wikipedia.org] who completed the voyage.
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Ferdinant Magellan did it in 1520.
No, Magellan only made it as far as the Philippines and then he was killed. It was Juan Sebastian Elcano [wikipedia.org] who completed the voyage.
That's true. And it did take 3 years to finish the voyage. They actually got back in 1522 (those few who made it all the way). However, people sail around the world in sailboats almost routinely now, in under a year.
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If you are going to get technical about it where do you think the energy from oil based fuels ultimately came from?
The difference between using battery power (with the batteries charged by solar all on-board) and wind is you can use the batteries even when there is no sunlight. Sailing when there is no wind doesn't last for very long at all.
Wind power will never be efficient enough to enable large transport vessels to use it exclusively. Solar+Batteries is a very real possibility of doing so.
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Francis Chichester sailed around the world under solar power in 1966.
Yep, and his account of it is worth reading. But circumnavigating the world was hardly new even then. He was simply the first (and fastest) to do so single-handed via the clipper route.
Captain Joshua Slocum's earlier single-handed circumnavigation wasn't non-stop, but his account of it ( Sailing Alone Around The World, 1900) is truly inspirational.
Re:Why the stupidity (Score:4, Funny)
Clearly they were working on a fishing vessel to go out trolling for engineers. (And quite successfully too it seems)
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Some of the most abundant elements are now somehow precious resources? aka, Silicon and Lithium.
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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.
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No, they still seem wasteful - they just ALSO seem like a necessity in today's modern world.
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The solar ship only works if there is enough sun shine.
Re:Very nice (Score:5, Funny)
A Hindenburg that floats.
Um, airships do float.
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Actually, your post made me think of something.
Given how long it took for him to complete the journey (500+ days) with solar power - he may well have been able to row himself across the globe faster than he made it in this ship.
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> 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 po