The 100% Solar Powered Sun Ship That NEVER Needs Charging!

for thousands of years mankind has harnessed the power of the wind to explore the oceans and seas but perhaps it's time to explore another natural resource this is a 55 foot solar powered yacht but is it possible to power what is essentially a four-bedroom house on two hulls using just the power of the sun this is the fully charged show fully charged live is coming to california this september 10th and 11th powered by electrify america get your tickets to the number one ev and home energy show now [Music] to drive from a to b and to live on a boat solar is definitely the best solution it's the most powerful solution the most efficient solution the cheapest solution and the solution with the with the longest lifespan [Music] well this is rather pleasant isn't it it was very nice of silent yachts to invite us out to majorca yeah and actually they have just sent us the coordinates they're um they're sending a new tender which is rather nice are you um are you ready i will meet you over there how you getting there doorboard i'll see you there all right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] now silent yachts have developed the world's first commercially available solar-powered yacht and we're even traveling there on this e-tender affectionately known as the rubber duck which has been charged by the solar panels i mean this definitely isn't lost on us that this is a complete and utter treat but look where we are we're here in majorca where the sun is absolutely blaring this seems like a completely no-brainer technology where the hell is andy [Music] silent yachts is a is a new company a couple of years old we started 2009 to produce boats solar electric boats and within a few years we are now in the range of up to 120 feet this is a silent 55 we have a 60 62 64 80 82 102 and 120. we have been sailing boats with wind for thousands of years why solar power of course with wind you can generate also electrical power but this needs much more surface big huge wind generators so a sail in my opinion i'm sailor at heart yeah definitely but um with a sale i cannot do what i what we are doing here uh we we have air conditioning running we have everything running like in a in a very comfortable household um [Music] how with a sail yeah will you wrap the energy in into the sail it doesn't work so so on sailboats usually you run the generator when you're at anchor in a bay like here and that's why uh that's why at least on the boat a solar panel is definitely superior to using the wind as a power source for energy [Music] so i'm up here on the driving deck which is absolutely amazing because not least have we got a little bit of a breeze but we can see this entire array of solar panels but it's really difficult to imagine just how much energy these are creating but what i'm told is that these can create up to 60 kilowatt hours per day now imagine that you've got 300 sunny days like somewhere here in in majorca that's 18 000 kilowatt hours per year which put that in context that's like running three average electric vehicles at 15 000 miles per year or around three five bedroom houses so i was chatting to the captain mike earlier and he said that sometimes they create so much energy they can't actually store it so what do you do with lxs well sometimes they've been known to provide electricity for other boats at the harbour but for today i believe that andy is going to find that exceptionally helpful the silent yacht doesn't just harness the power of the sun to charge the batteries to then drive the motor and rather propellers which drive the boat along that battery is of supplying electricity to everything on board because everything's electrical so we've got massive fridge freezers we've got coffee machines we've got the the water tank which produces fresh water does about i think 150 liters a minute and everything is super efficient in fact we've even got a charge point here 230 domestic volt uh supply to charge all our camera batteries that we're using today while filming on the yacht and you can recharge that that surplus energy you're creating to char the little tender boat the imaging used earlier the dpv that i've used and everything's designed to be super efficient to make best use of that electricity the sun is giving us we are consuming a on a normal average day like today if we for example drive with the boat for five six hours if we run the air conditioning and if you we cook breakfast uh lunch and dinner we will consume 80 100 kilowatt hours per day that means in liters if this would be a conventionally powered boat this would be because the engines are not as efficient so it's not the amount of fuel you put in you get out in energy most of it is is wasted unfortunately so this will be probably about 80 to 100 liters that we would use today on a conventionally powered boat for the same comfort the same distance the same amenities on this boat it will cost nothing and even if we take some power on from the batteries today tomorrow morning it will be recharged for free and latest at noon time the batteries will be full again [Music] what's great about the silent yacht is that they haven't just taken an old diesel boat and taking the engine out and stuck some solar panels on it much like some of the newer car manufacturers they've designed this boat from the ground up because there's things you just don't need anymore you don't need a massive space for an engine um but also that's given the opportunity to make it as efficient as possible to make best use of the power that the solar panels are generating and one of the cool things is this it's called the fly bridge which is basically a cover over the main bit that you you should steer from and where power panels are up here when you are going in motion head you can lower this fly bridge down which makes the whole boat more aerodynamic which reduces drag which makes the boat uh more efficient and you're losing less power to go ahead and that same thinking isn't just up top it's actually under the water as well because it's this is a twin hulled boat a catamaran which is a very efficient type of vessel as far as cutting through the water being hydrodynamic again reducing drag which increases efficiency and even the shape of both those hulls is designed to be at its most efficient at a specific speed and that specific speed is six to eight knots which is the normal cruising speed for the silent yacht we did not use a conventional already existing drawing concept of a catamaran we started with a white sheet of paper and we designed the whole boat around the solar panels and the electric motors for obvious reasons we need to maximize the solar surface as well obvious reasons we do not need an engine room there is no engine yeah we have a small electric motor that is somewhere under the floorboards you won't even see it it's compared to a diesel engine it's it's tiny yeah we are talking about the size of about two shoe boxes uh for a motor that has uh 250 kilowatt uh so it can be hidden anywhere that means the whole concept of the boat is completely different so in here is one of two 250 kilowatt motors there's one on either side in each of the two hulls in each motor drives individually the two propellers at the back which clearly moves the yacht forward and the yacht will do a speed or will cruise about six to eight knots with a top speed about this particular model of about 17 18 knots and it has a maximum range of about 100 miles which is more than you need for a yacht like this and what it'll be used for the good thing is the boats are not more expensive than uh conventionally powered uh power catamarans the technology in fact is more expensive batteries uh cost much more uh than a normal combustion engine they're pretty cheap in fact we still try to keep the price at the same level as a comparable conventionally powered boat in order to make it easy for the people to understand that this is the way to go but your in fact even if it would be more expensive it will be paid back pretty soon because we have virtually no maintenance costs because there is no maintenance we have lifetime warranty on the electric motors and uh and 25 years warranty on the solar panels 10 years warranty on the batteries so this is a long very long lifespan i've never heard about a warranty for sales that you get 10-year warranty on a sale or on a on a diesel engine it simply does not exist so all the other things also need to be exchanged and uh the lifespan of of the equipment that we install is much longer and it pays back um twice because almost no service cost longer life span and three times actually no consumption or virtually no consumption in here we've got three compartments and in each compartment is a big battery pack and each battery pack is 75 kilowatt hours the whole thing will give you 225 kilowatt hours now to alleviate any concerns you might have about having big batteries in a boat at sea these batteries are all secured waterproof to ip68 rating which means you could drop one these batteries in the sea five feet a meter and a half depths of water leave it there for half an hour pull it out towel it off plug it back in and it will still work so these are super safe now for completeness i need to mention that the silent unit does have a small diesel generator you don't need it you don't need to run any appliances inside to charge the tent at the charging dbv and of course you don't need it to power the vessel it is purely for emergencies and it would be irresponsible to be out in the atlantic without some means of backup power that boat over there um is the uh silent solar wave 64. it um went across all europe several times and um also crossed the atlantic ocean and entirely on solar power entirely on solar power yeah it's it's the first uh electrically powered series uh production boat um that ever crossed the atlantic ocean [Music] when we started this project the whole mindset of the people was different everybody thought to know that nobody needs it it's a niche product why should anyone put some solar panels or let's say more than one or two solar panels on sailing boats is typical because if you need more power you have a generator it's easier it's existing technology everything is available well known so there was no need for a change on the market uh one could think yeah it was not like this because there were many people that wanted to have a change uh we understood that and that's why we were convinced that it will not only be a niche product that it will become mainstream [Music] it's clear that green energy is percolating into every aspect of our lives and what i would like to see is the sort of technology that sound yachts are using crop up in other maritime industries like on fishing boats on big cargo vessels but what silent yachts have also proven that yes it absolutely is possible to power yachts using the power of the sun we have had an absolutely extraordinary day travelled the island of majorca had some outstanding hospitality and just used 20 of the batteries of course if you liked what you've seen click on the like button subscribe and all the usual bits and bobs are down below and if you have been thanks for watching

Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 545,478

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Id: OyyDw9KuWWs

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 16 2022