Essay by Eric Worrall
Sail and solar in place of big diesel engines. What could possibly go wrong?
An electric cruise ship with gigantic solar sails is set to launch in 2030
By Nell Lewis, CNN
Updated 7:03 AM EDT, Thu June 8, 2023CNN — Adventure cruise company Hurtigruten Norway today revealed plans for a zero-emissions electric cruise ship with retractable sails covered in solar panels, which is due to set sail in 2030.
The company currently has a fleet of eight ships, each with a capacity of 500 passengers, that travel along the Norwegian coast from Oslo to the Arctic Circle. Although a relatively small firm, CEO Hedda Felin hopes that this innovation “can inspire the entire maritime industry.”
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The resulting design will run predominantly off 60 megawatt batteries that can be charged in port with clean energy, as renewables account for 98% of Norway’s electricity system. Gerry Larsson-Fedde, SVP of marine operations for Hurtigruten Norway, who came up with the idea of a zero-emission ship, estimates that the batteries will have a range of 300 to 350 nautical miles, meaning that during an 11-day round trip, one liner would have to charge around seven or eight times.
To reduce reliance on the battery, when it’s windy, three retractable sails – or wings – will rise out of the deck, reaching a maximum height of 50 meters. They can adjust independently, shrinking to pass under bridges or changing their angle to catch the most wind, explains Larsson-Fedde. He adds that the sails will be covered in a total of 1,500 square meters of solar panels that will generate energy to top up the batteries while sailing – and the battery levels will be displayed on the ship’s side.
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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hurtigruten-norway-zero-emission-cruise-ship-climate-c2e-spc-intl/index.html
My biggest concern is the ship is essentially a gigantic battery. Maybe battery technology will be a lot safer by 2030, but given a large battery fire has already sunk least one ship, going really big on batteries doesn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm.
Another concern is energy capacity. On my first and only cruise, a large cyclone formed a hundred miles behind us. The captain really stepped on the gas to get away from the weather. Would stepping on the gas even be an option on an energy constrained battery powered cruise liner?
Maybe for cruises with really short runs between stops this might be a viable option, just as EVs are a potentially viable option if you don’t have to drive significant distances, and can afford to keep a backup ICE vehicle for long trips.
But let’s just say I won’t be buying a ticket for the maiden voyage.
iirc the amount of solar power that would be needed to simply keep the air inside a cruise ship breathable exceeds the ship’s surface area on all sides by about 8x and that doesn’t include night or charging or refrigeration or hot water or movement either
Heath-Robinson would be proud.
“William Heath Robinson was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist, best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives.“
Can one short the share price?
Careful. Subsidies.
Let’s see if they can get financing for that ship- I don’t know what a cruise ship costs but it must be a few hundred million. Who’ll finance such a risky ship? I bet nobody will.
Read of Havila Kystrutten AS financing adventures. Early financing was from Russia, but then pulled in retaliation for NATO’s sanctions in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Now financing may be from Ireland.
At the start of the conflict, Norway wasn’t a part of NATO.
ESG
I have reserved a cabin on Havila MS Capella (hybrid LNG electric) in December 2024 for a Hurtigruten (‘express route’) cruise. The ship is advertised as being capable of operating for four hours on battery power in UNESCO restricted waters. Like Geirangerfjord, without worrying about environmental issues, and you can do so in utter silence. The battery packs, which are supplied by Corvus, weigh 86 tons, and they have a capacity of 6.1 megawatt hours.
I sailed for four years operating a nuclear powered vessel with a comparably heavy lead acid battery rated at 1.3 MWh IIRC. I have lived for some years with two cheap LiPo batteries that I cannot convince Milady Wife to charge and store in an out building.
”Happy wife, happy life!”. Priorities priorities priorities.
All the ships in the trans-Atlantic slave trade were “net zero”
If a 100 KWh hour car battery pack weighs roughly 1,000 pounds, then I will assume a 60 MWh battery pack to weigh roughly 600,000 pounds or 300 tons. The better part of one ton per passenger. Plus the sail/solar array weight. That’s a fairly large penalty. Of course there will be less generator weight.
Smaller cabins?
Tour MS Havila Capella LNG electric hybrid in Norwegian. Engineroom battery room at 4:15 of 10:30
https://youtu.be/7FqRdTevAGE
The lie will sail halfway around the world while the truth about it will just be putting its shoes on. Ironic.
They could call it ‘Titanic ll’
I wouldn’t go on any cruise ship, but especially not one that is deliberately crippled.
. . . not to mention one containing Li-ion rechargeable batteries.
Just think of scaling up a fire from a Tesla 100 kWh battery pack by 600 times . . . YIKES!
Solar panels on a ship that travels between Oslo and the Arctic Circle? How much sunshine could they receive above 60 degrees north latitude?
Not for winter
It’s clean, it’s green, it can’t possibly fail….. until it does. Society’s great successes came from a bottom up system of discovery, investigation, application and optimization. I suspect we can virtually guarantee the failure of a top down approach that starts with a prejudicial desire for a particular outcome and then assumes we can work backward to fill in with knowledge and technology on demand. We might as well write our own laws of nature based on how we want things to work, not how they actually work. We can suspend gravity, directional time, nuclear physics and electromagnetism at any time we wish on a whim.
I think they should pack it with all the Eco-Zealots they can cram aboard and sail it to the Antarctic to investigate the “disappearing ice.”
And refuse any “rescue missions” to display their confidence in “clean energy” to do the job.
If you build a vessel in a different way you need to consider the implication of this on its operation.
The simple fallacy of Erics argument is to assume you will do what you have done, regardless.
You go on a cruise for vacation. Today they sell cruises on the premise of going from port to port, and guaranteeing the route you will sail.
If you make a cruise vessel that has sails as its only means of propulsion (current rules dictate that you have to have a take-me-home capacity and the Hurtigruten vessel(s) will have internal combustion engines for that purpose) you will necessarily sell cruises on a different premise. And you will sail in a manner that reduces the risk of adverse weather.
Changes. Somehow they are always difficult.
Watch when a cruise is late returning to port because of no wind and clouds. Yeah, that’s what the passengers want. How about a nuclear engine and forget about the other stupid ideas? How about long oars for the passengers when the wind dies at night? How about the huge incendiary batteries that will be needed? Yeah, no thanks. Having been on dozens of large cruise ships decades ago, power for a ship was NEVER a question. Reliable.
If the ship’s 60 MWh battery nears depletion (generally defined as a state-of-charge being 20% or less), the wind and solar energy provided by the deployable sails won’t make a squat’s difference in the power needed to move the ship at more than a snail’s pace.
Who picks up the tab for marine towing?