Sweden's New Car Carrier Is the World's Largest Wind-Powered Vessel (cnn.com) 113
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Oceanbird might look like a ship of the future, but it harks back to ancient maritime history -- because it's powered by the wind. The transatlantic car carrier is being designed by Wallenius Marine, a Swedish shipbuilder, with support from the Swedish government and several research institutions. With capacity for 7,000 vehicles, the 650 foot-long vessel is a similar size to conventional car carriers, but it will look radically different. The ship's hull is topped by five telescopic "wing sails," each 260 feet tall. Capable of rotating 360 degrees without touching each other, the sails can be retracted to 195 feet in order to clear bridges or withstand rough weather.
The sails, which will be made of steel and composite materials, need to be this size to generate enough propulsive power for the 35,000-ton ship. Although "the general principles of solid wing sails is not new," designing the Oceanbird's sails has been a challenge, says Mikael Razola, a naval architect and research project manager for Oceanbird at Wallenius Marine. That's because these are the tallest ship sails that have ever been constructed. "This ship, at the top of the mast, will be more than 100 meters (328 feet) above the water surface," says Razola. "When you move up into the sky that much, wind direction and velocity change quite a lot." Oceanbird has a projected top speed of about 10 knots and will take around 12 days to cross the Atlantic. While that's considerably slower than standard car carriers, which can travel at 17 knots, the Oceanbird will emit 90% less CO2 than conventional car carriers.
Razola says their plan is "to see Oceanbird sailing in 2024."
The sails, which will be made of steel and composite materials, need to be this size to generate enough propulsive power for the 35,000-ton ship. Although "the general principles of solid wing sails is not new," designing the Oceanbird's sails has been a challenge, says Mikael Razola, a naval architect and research project manager for Oceanbird at Wallenius Marine. That's because these are the tallest ship sails that have ever been constructed. "This ship, at the top of the mast, will be more than 100 meters (328 feet) above the water surface," says Razola. "When you move up into the sky that much, wind direction and velocity change quite a lot." Oceanbird has a projected top speed of about 10 knots and will take around 12 days to cross the Atlantic. While that's considerably slower than standard car carriers, which can travel at 17 knots, the Oceanbird will emit 90% less CO2 than conventional car carriers.
Razola says their plan is "to see Oceanbird sailing in 2024."
Nice try, Sweden. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a matter of fuel cost, not a matter of saving the planet! More and more existing ships even retro-fit sails on themselves to make the ship hybrid and save on fuel cost:
https://www.marinelog.com/tech... [marinelog.com]
http://dasivedo.com/ [dasivedo.com]
Re:Nice try, Sweden. (Score:5, Insightful)
Time is, however, unfortunately money. If you add an extra 5 days to transit, that's an extra 5/365,24ths of a company's annual revenue on said given route that is tied up in inventory on that route, e.g. an increased delay between accounts receivable and accounts payable.
So take, say, a company focused 100% on selling products across the Atlantic (for simplicity) with $1B annual revenue and $50M annual profits - said company might be worth, say, $500M. It needs to come up with an extra $14M to pay for its extra in-transit inventory. If done through a capital raise, the company would have to dilute by about 3% to pay for this. The effect is meaningful for steady-state companies but it's worst for rapidly-growing companies, as the amount of inventory in transit will continue to grow over time, ahead of revenue. You open a new factory and it starts churning out thousands of widgets to send, you immediately get hit by the added inventory costs; it's like an extra capital cost atop building your new factory.
The other issue is that it's not just a company's inventory that you're tying up in transit - you're tying up the ship itself in transit. It achieves fewer trips per year, which means that amortizing its capital costs must be done on less revenue per year, meaning it must charge a larger share of its amortized capital costs per year to customers. And its capital costs with this new design are already going to be very, very high.
This doesn't mean that it's the wrong decision, of course; one has to run a full analysis, and fuel savings can be a big deal. But in general, companies (both producers and transport companies) try to minimize transit times, for good reasons.
Re: (Score:3)
Time is, however, unfortunately money.
Always reminds me of this exchange in the movie Volunteers [wikipedia.org]:
Re: (Score:3)
And yet most of the transoceanic shipping companies run their ships slow to save fuel.
Re: (Score:2)
There is of course always a balancing point. I was just illustrating the things that factor into this balancing point.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The argument that the SHIP itself can make fewer trips is more interesting, but if it's much cheaper to operate then there might be a win.
This math also applies to regular ships, and it already results in m
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
I worked on analyzing eco-friendly shipping, and super-slow steaming with ships powered by LNG would cut the CO2 emissions by more than 70% while having around the same cost for pipelined or bulk goods. Not a 100% reduction, but still awesome.
Re: (Score:2)
This is very much not true. Automakers are beholden to the quarterly cycle. Shipping to markets where a company doesn't have a factory creates a "wave" impact, where the early part of the quarter involves lots of shipping to remote markets and deliveries get clustered to the ends of the quarter. The greater the degree of localization, the less this happens; the less the degree, the more this happens.
Also, w
Re: (Score:3)
Five days of revenue (note: not profit!) is very much not negligible.
It's not a loss of five days revenue.
If they sell 10000 cars a day then they need a supply of 10000 cars a day.
The cost is
- capital cost of the ships needed to provide 10k/day
- operational cost of the ships needed
- cost of stock for the period between manufacture and sale
You'd need more of these sailing ships, but they'd cost less to run, so do the number crunching and there's your answer.
No revenue lost, potential cost savings.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
>This math also applies to regular ships, and it already results in modern cargo ships already sailing slower than the sail-power clippers from 19-th century.
Having some knowledge in sail and steam history in shipping, this sounded fantastic to me, so I went to check. This is factually wrong. Fastest clippers could push 16kn average at their peak speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Most clippers, and same clippers off peak were significantly slower.
Slow steaming is 18kn, as per your own link.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Quite possible. But this is not the case today, because fuel is nowhere near the prices it was back then. And it wasn't quite so in the Atlantic shipping, where exposure to adverse weather is much greater than in the Pacific, therefore making travel TIME cost significantly more due to wear and tear on the ship and increased chance to lose cargo in case of container and hauler loads.
Re: (Score:2)
Super-slow steaming won't be profitable in the near future with the current ships, but if CO2 emissions are taken seriously, it will become profitable again. It'd be interesting to model sail ships like the one in the
Re: (Score:2)
That kind of beancounter reasoning leads us to just in time manufacturing, where there is little or no reserve of stock or work in progress. It looks good on paper, assuming everything works, but the slightest upset in the supply chain can bring the whole thing down. I believe the UK may experience such upsets, when trade with the rest of Europe is no longer as smooth as it was.
Carrying stock does have a cost, but it also has benefits. The costs are easy to account for on a short term basis, but the benefit
Re: (Score:2)
You can do more with the right design of vertical axis wind turbines. Not that you can use the energy to go faster, just that you can pick up extra energy for other purposes like batteries and the various electrical items on the vessel, effectively snatching that energy for free.
Re: (Score:2)
This is actually the easiest problem to solve. Just charge docking fees or whatnot based on how polluting the ship is. Presto! It is now three times cheaper to use Sweden's new car carrier.
Re: Nice try, Sweden. (Score:2)
It is also important to know how much of whatâ(TM)s important is merely keeping the pipeline full and not absolute speed. If all it takes is to start the shipping five days earlier once and keep the slower ships moving, it may be that there is no issue with starvation at the receiving end. Some things are time critical or demand exceeds capacity so much that logistically, it would take too many ships simultaneously in transit to make this work. But for many applications, merely having a few more ships
Re:Nice try, Sweden. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do what you can.
It's easy to despise folks who throw trash out on the roadside, but just because a number of people continue to litter doesn't mean there is no value in disposing of your own trash properly.
Every good thing you do matters, no matter how small.
Re: (Score:2)
Sweden might win this one anyway. If it's cheaper to run and if they have the patents and experience everyone else will be playing catch up.
Re:Nice try, Sweden. (Score:4, Funny)
Sweden might win this one anyway. If it's cheaper to run and if they have the patents and experience everyone else will be playing catch up.
Not too hard at the speed this thing sails. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Every good thing you do matters, no matter how small.
Our own sun, will eventually consume our entire planet. Our species, horribly addicted to warmongering greed, will likely die on this dying rock before escaping that fate.
And based on the inexplicable artifacts unearthed around the planet, we've likely damn near extincted ourselves before. Several times.
What? Of fucking course we're stupid enough to do it again. Evolution, is a manmade delusion.
90%? (Score:2)
So what they're saying is that their sailboat car carrier will emit 10% as much CO2 as conventional car carrier?
Where is that CO2 coming from?
Re:90%? (Score:5, Insightful)
The engines, duh.
Do you honestly think that a 650 foot long boat is going to sail into a harbor and up to a dock? If the wind isn't blowing in the right direction, it's not like something that big can tack in a harbor.
This is a massive cargo ship. Assuming that 5% of the trip on each end would be under engine power seems entirely reasonable. If not its own engines, it would at least need tugs to get it in and out of the harbor, docked and undocked.
Re:90%? (Score:4)
That's why it reduces emission by 90%, not 100%. It has "engines for manoeuvring in and out of ports and for emergencies".
Re: (Score:2)
That's why it reduces emission by 90%, not 100%. It has "engines for maneuvering in and out of ports and for emergencies".
And to generate electricity to run ship systems ...
Re: (Score:2)
If you look at their numbers taking the high range (12 tons/day) for 12-days, we have 144 tons, vs 120 tons for 7 days for 840 tons. Except that the wind powered vessel also moves fewer cars (7k vs 8k), seems like: (12 * 12) / (7 * 120) * 8/7 = 19.5% of the conventional ship.
Knowing nothing about ship engines and maneuvering, I would expect better.
Re: (Score:2)
Compared to traveling across the ocean, a bit of work by motor driven tugs in port is probably negligible. I think the sailboat would benefit from engine power if winds are so unfavourable that the ship might be in danger, but for regular dock maneuvers, tugs are there to do that.
Re: (Score:1)
Stern or bow forward? (Score:2)
Um, from which direction is the crew blowing?
Re: (Score:2)
From the back, so the boat goes forward. Duh.
Don't you think I know that? (Score:2)
Not so bad, if the thing was real (Score:1)
the time that sailboats are using wind exclusively are long time past. On a ship this size, they will have to use an engine for port manoeuvres and all the fancy gizmos on board need electricity. So I expect them to have a big arse generator on board. And no, relying solely on hydro-, solar- or wind-generated electricity isn't a good idea on a ship this size. Too much risk just to score a few points with crazy purists.
More concerning about the article is that this just a piece of fluff by some academics an
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
More concerning about the article is that this just a piece of fluff by some academics and designers having scored a hit on the gravy train to produce some fantasy-cruiser in a 3d-renderer. No shipping company has plonked down their cash (or taken out a loan) to have such a thing built.
Somewhat more real than this. a) It's an actual shipbuilding company that sells actual ships doing the design work. b) It's beyond 3-d rendering, there's a nice picture in the article of a physical model being tested in a warehouse-sized tank. But yes, no one's bought one yet.
Re: (Score:3)
The economics of such a thing would be quite complex. On one hand, you have a huge savings in fuel. You could further cut into the marginal cost of shipping by automation. There's no reason such a ship couldn't essentially be a drone with no or crew or maybe a skeleton crew.
So you could really cut the cost of shipping something across the ocean. The place where you'd lose is the value tied up in the inventory itself.
In pre-computer days, businesses built stocks of supplies, from which they generated stoc
Re: (Score:2)
If you're talking about keeping 7000 cars on such a ship, that's probably over fifty million dollars of inventory sitting out in the middle of the ocean for a whole additional week.
Most shipping lines offer variable rates, and variable schedules, on the same run. (Slower transit times save a lot of fuel, which usually translates to cheaper shipping rates). So, the faster the run, the more the customer pays.
The majority of retailers, and industries, will take the significantly cheaper rate, and the much longer transit time. To make up for this, and keep the business, foreign industries start manufacturing, and shipping, many items months ahead of their domestic competitors.
From what
Most of the time in ports? (Score:2)
Certainly if you want to ship a container around the world it will spend far longer in the ports than on the ship.
Ships also have to queue up, So maybe the transit time is not so critical.
I would have thought sails were sails though. And ropes (or steal cables) would be the efficient way to manage them, even on a big ship. Most of the time you are sailing into wind -- not just due to the Gods but also due to the apparent wind shifting forward. I have never understood why ships were ever square rigged un
Why a monohul (Score:2)
That is also odd.
That ship would need a deep keel to stay upright, with many issues. Surely a cat would be better for a large ship.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that multihulls are a bit of a tradeoff. They're better heading across waves, and more stable on calm seas, but tilt more when moving along them. They also cost more to build per unit of displacement. Surely if they made sense we'd be using them for container ships already, but we aren't.
Re: (Score:2)
Existing ships do not have sails. The sails push the boat over. Which is why monohull yachts have deep and heavy keels. The other option is a trimaran.
Port operation might be more difficult with a cat.
Re: (Score:2)
I would have thought sails were sails though.
These are sails though.
They don't need rope or steel cables, which makes them even easier to maintain and manage.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Car carriers are somewhat problematic because their cargo is very low density, so you have a ship with a large volume for its weight. The sails make that worse. I suspect this ship will need a lot of ballast. Lead-acid batteries would be a good way to combine that with energy storage.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Not so bad, if the thing was real (Score:2)
I foresee a large press gathering as it sails out of the harbour with lots of clapping and cheering, then as soon as they hit the international maritime border, hear the captain bellow, OK , start chucking those baby seals into the boiler so we can make some real headway!
Re: (Score:1)
Engines for propulsion on windless times and power generation at the very least.
Re: (Score:2)
Where is that CO2 coming from?
I am guessing it is the CO2 equivalent production cost of building the sailboat, averaged over its expected service life.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
How about dollars (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No money saved on the maintenance. All those fancy telescoping airfoils need maintenance too and it's a fair bet to assume, this will just be as expensive as the engine maintenance.
Also, given that marine engines are pretty mature technology that is well understood and those 100 m high sails are cutting edge techno-dreams, I would expect the maintenance costs of the sailship higher than a conventional ship.
I guess, if all they only mention CO2 as a benefit, everything else is going to be worse. Slower, more
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You're nuts. Fuel cost is the majority of what it costs to move a cargo ship from one port to another. If you can get a 90% savings on that, even if you have a 50% increase in maintenance costs (which you won't), this will be a huge cost savings even with the slower transit time.
And transit time just doesn't matter that much when it comes to cars. Shipping cars faster just results in a "hurry up and wait" scenario at the receiving end. Most cars stay in port for far longer than they're on the ship, they
Re: (Score:1)
The majority, as in most operations, is employee costs. Fuel costs only account for 50% of a trip. Doubling or tripling the time means doubling and tripling the employee costs as well as the non-salary costs.
Re: (Score:2)
You might want to look up the definition of "majority."
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
No money saved on the maintenance. All those fancy telescoping airfoils need maintenance too and it's a fair bet to assume, this will just be as expensive as the engine maintenance.
Those fancy telescoping airfoils could reasonably be actuated with hydraulics, pneumatics, or just geared down electric motors. ANY of those systems are simpler than a diesel engine.
Of course the vessels will have diesel engines as well, in order to get in and out of ports, or to operate while becalmed. But they will get many less runtime hours, which means many less maintenance events, and they can also be much smaller. Since they are using much less fuel, it's also more economical to run a higher grade of
Re:How about dollars (Score:4, Informative)
There is a *slow* change to replace diesel with electric for port maneuvering. A number of factors involved, in which 'environmental concerns' is on the list ... somewhere close to the bottom. Safety is one - diesel fuel itself is a bit a hazard. Size and weight are there, too, although that is a bit of a wash at the moment. And reliability - yep, maritime diesel is a mature tech - and yep, the number of times the thrusters cut out because of fuel issues (clog, or simply running out) is not insignificant (as in, a couple of cases per year).
And there's always $$$. A few solar panels, a long trip ... batteries are fully charged for use at the destination. No need to buy fuel. It's a simple equation - how long is the payback for electric, vs diesel? If it's under two years, then most companies would use it.
Re: (Score:2)
It does seem like those sails could have solar panels on them. But I'm not doing the math to figure out if they would be sufficient to do the job, I prefer to leave that to someone to whom it comes more naturally.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine it would be far more effective to just use ship's propellers as generator drivers to charge batteries than to put additional complexity onto already complex and novel sail system.
Modern ship drives are already diesel - generator - electric engine - propeller.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine it would be far more effective to just use ship's propellers as generator drivers to charge batteries than to put additional complexity onto already complex and novel sail system.
I don't know if it would be more effective or not, I would imagine that the propellers are more efficient in one direction than the other. I do know that the additional complexity of solar panels is very little — solar power systems are trivial to integrate these days, as with MPPT charge controllers you have excellent control over output voltage.
Re: (Score:2)
Additional complexity bolted onto already complex system is always multiplicative, not additive.
And you're not going to slap an off the shelf PV, graft it onto the sail with forces it has to withstand and hope that this PV of your survives for any meaningful amount of time. This will require significant engineering work. On top of the system that is untested and extremely complex. Any multiplicative effect there is bad.
Finally, propellers are intended to work in both directions, because ships also need to r
Re: (Score:2)
I think solutions like this are forward-looking. It seems prudent to experiment with technology that will reduce dependence on oil. It is not just about CO2 emissions, important as that is. Oil and gas extraction appear to be scraping the barrel, with technology such as fracking required to squeeze the stuff out of the earth. It is an industry in decline. So I am all for developing sail power for global goods transport.
Twelve days to cross the Atlantic (Score:3)
Weather permitting.
And only from west to east.
East to west? Twenty days, at best.
Also weather permitting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Weather permitting.
Short of extreme gales, hurricanes, or dead winds, why would weather be an issue? All three cases are edge scenarios.
And only from west to east.
Never heard of sailing into the wind [lifeofsailing.com], have you? Funny how it's been done for centuries. That these sails are shaped like the wings of a plane means they will be more efficient sailing into the wind than traditional cloth sails.
Re: (Score:2)
It was more than clear from the context that he meant the *time* to sail only applied that direction, and not the fact of sailing.
The next sailing vessel that makes the same trip speed into the wind as with it will be the first . . .
hawk
Re: (Score:2)
Most modern sailing vessels sail *slowest* with the wind. There are sailboats that can make headway dead into the wind faster than straight downwind. This one probably can't, but it's also unlikely your destination on a transoceanic voyage would be straight into the wind at all times. As the GP pointed out, rigid airfoil sails are optimized for sailing into the wind, and are terrible for sailing downwind.
Re: (Score:2)
Sailing into the wind is extremely slow compared to sailing with wind. Just the fact that you need to angle 40-45 degrees into the wind to generate decent force alone makes it much slower, as you are effectively not going in desired direction, but in a different one, making your trip longer and your effective speed lesser.
P.S. In Atlantic Ocean, extreme weather conditions are a norm, not an exception.
Re: (Score:2)
The article already gave you the east to west travel time. ... Seriously.
Learn to read
Or learn to sail.
The latter is probably more easy :P
Re: (Score:2)
It is possible to build a boat that uses wind power to generate electricity, then use that to drive motors and propellers. The direction of the prevailing wind does not matter then.
Not "IS" (Score:5, Informative)
"Will be."
Have it built and working, and announce it then.
Re: (Score:2)
There's no good reason to wait to announce it, though there is good reason to use the correct tense when writing articles (or headlines) about it.
Complaining about the article is silly. Though arguably, complaining about the headline is silly, because Slashdot's staff gives no fucks.
Re: (Score:1)
Posting a story on slashot is easy, cheap and takes a few seconds.
I'm suggesting the fucktard editors take a look at what they're doing and do it better.
If you don't let potential customers know that you can build a particular product, t
If you seriously believe that the investors and customers of a large ship find information about it from public announcements, you don't know much about how the world works.
Doing what you suggest is stupid.
Doing what I suggest is supersmart, as usual.
now, about that cargo (Score:2)
If we can get them to ship only BEVs, that would be a double-win.
Re: (Score:2)
Except it does *not* exist - title is inaccurate (Score:2)
Read the article.
"The transatlantic car carrier is being designed by Wallenius Marine, a Swedish shipbuilder, with support from the Swedish government and several research institutions."
"This ship, at the top of the mast, will be more than 100 meters (328 feet) above the water surface,"
Until this ship is actually in service, I will file this with the "miracle battery" story that come out about twice a week.
Sails (Score:2)
What if the wind doesn't blow or blows too hard? (Score:2)
I think this is a great idea and yes, the article say it also has engines for manouvering , but what it doesn't say is are those engines large enough to power it when its becalmed in the middle of the ocean or is in a storm and cannot raise its sails.
Because at the end of the day this is a commercial enterprise and having 7000 brand new volvos (for example) sitting a thousand miles off the azores going nowhere for a week is not going to be ideal for volvo or their customers.
Re: (Score:2)
but what it doesn't say is are those engines large enough to power it when its becalmed in the middle of the ocean or is in a storm and cannot raise its sails. ...
If you would read the summary, you would have noticed, the sails are always raised about 30m high
And: you can be rest assured if it could not move under engine power if the sea is "becalmed" or stormy weather: it most likely would be mentioned in the article, like: "Well, if there is a storm - obviously everyone will die a horrible death. If the w
Re: (Score:2)
Oh look, one of slashdots resident trolls has spouted yet more incoherent nonsense. Quelle surprise.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for your insightful comment :D
Maybe automate GM & GZ calculation and ballast (Score:1)
Re: Maybe automate GM & GZ calculation and bal (Score:2)
How much cheaper... (Score:2)
I don't really care about the CO2 reduction aspect of the ship.
I'm more curious, not having to use nearly as much fuel - how much cheaper is it per run?
Then, how much more did the design/construction cost - although if it works well they can just re-use the design so that cost does not seem as important.
We'll see (Score:2)
...the shipping industry is littered with good intentions crushed by the needs of our consumerist society.
Oh, and 10kts AT BEST.
The fact is that if a ship is consuming vastly less fuel (and sailing slower), shippers are going to demand a cheap rate for their freight. Couple that reduced return on a ship GUARANTEED to have much higher capital costs (and likely much higher service costs) in an industry that is already struggling to top 3% ROCE over time?
The fact is that international shipping has a lot of re
Wake me when there's a passenger version ... (Score:2)
then there's the math . . . (Score:2)
The TFA section called 'Cleaning up a dirty industry' says:
"Large, conventional RoRo [car carriers] use an average of 40 tons of fuel per day, generating 120 tons of CO2"
Is it reasonable that 40 tons becomes 120 tons or is this a new Green math?
Re: (Score:2)
C / H -> CO2 / H2O.
Seriously, what did you learn in school?
Yes, one tone of C becomes 3 tons of CO2 if burned. (*facepalm*)
Seriously, how stupid are you Americans? It is so unbelievable what I had to read today on /.
Go back into your caves, do the planet a pleasure.
Re: (Score:2)
Is it reasonable that 40 tons becomes 120 tons or is this a new Green math?
Burning carbon in air will result in a larger mass of CO2, because of the oxygen extracted from the atmosphere. So I do not think there is anything wrong with the math.
errr (Score:1)
Nuke cargo ships (Score:2)
CO2 or fuel/$ savings (Score:1)
They are so focused on CO2 savings, it is almost like they forgot the savings from using the wind which is free energy.
Re: (Score:2)
The CO2 saving is what's relevant to you and I. Only their investors care how much money they save, because it's not like they're going to pass that on to the customer. They'll pocket the additional profits. Everyone on the planet is affected by their CO2 emissions.
1970s Era Story (Score:2)
Hell i grew up in the 70s reading this sort of shit in Popular Mechanics type magazines about once every 6 months. If it wasn't a wind powered cargo ship it was some fanciful lighter than air vehicle....
Boring....
What Happened To "Electrification of Everything?" (Score:1)
Two words (Score:2)
"Artist's impression".