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.”
…
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.
Nothing like heading backwards, is there?
Yep 3-6 week long ocean crossings…subject to the whims of the wind…doldrums events lasting weeks…no desalination of ocean water for ship wide consumption…The negative possibilities are endless
The Pilgrims managed.
And their trip was how long?
And how many died en-route? Zero but…
…The Mayflower took 66 days to cross the Atlantic – a horrible crossing afflicted by winter storms and long bouts of seasickness – so bad that most could barely stand up during the voyage. By October, they began encountering a number of Atlantic storms that made the voyage treacherous…
…No one died on the trip across the Atlantic, but 48 died of infectious diseases aboard the Mayflower while it was harboured in Cape Cod during the winter. The Pilgrims had to remain on board because having arrived at the beginning of winter, they could not settle on land until Spring.
The party didn’t include any survival oriented folks like farmers and skilled craftsmen. No need when you have religion.
Had they arrived in Virginia as planned, that lack would not have been as serious.
Peanuts (Charlie Brown) Thanksgiving movie disk from 90’s had a great cartoony version of the Mayflower’s voyage.
“The Pilgrims managed”
Manage they did. After a fashion. A rather classic example of bad luck and dubious planning. The Donner party actually had a higher survival rate (53%) than the Pilgrims (49%). The Pilgrims weren’t trying to get to Massachusetts BTW. Their original destination was Virginia,
The Pilgrims had no choice.
Get back to us when all Americans have traded their cars in on horses and buggys.
To be fair, Hurtigruten operates up and down the Norgegian coast, so the doldrums and ocean crossings are not likely feature largely in their plans.
“ Although a relatively small firm, CEO Hedda Felin hopes that this innovation “can inspire the entire maritime industry.”“
Imagine the smell of all the spoiled food that was dependent on refrigeration when the batteries go dry.
But think of the possibilities, Decaf. They could have gun ports with cannons on port and starboard sides, and when competitive liners approached one another, they could have broadside battles, aiming the cannons at the sails and solar panels.
Guess what 2003 movie, starring Russell Crowe, I started watching again last night. Hint: Master and Commander
Regards,
Bob
I think they should add about 100 oars and rowers to each side. If we’re going backwards let’s go all the way.
Those could be a necessity during times of null wind. I doubt a few solar panels could supply sufficient energy to power an electric motor capable of driving a liner sized vessel
The engines on a proper cruise ship do much, much more than drive the motors. They provide all electricity on board for the cabins, theatres, casinos, pools etc, Plus they provide clean, drinkable water and much more.
Especially in a Norwegian winter.
I doubt the sails will move it either.
That was a great flick! I gotta watch it again.
Yes!
See also Waterworld.
The oceans have risen high enough to completely submerge the Rocky Mountains, and NYC is less than 100 feet below the waves.
Now I have to watch Waterworld. Thanks a lot, Mark! /sarc off
“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, so going really big on batteries doesn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm.”
The Enterprise had a way to eject its warp core.
Maybe this ship will have a way to eject its battery pack?
Then they can rely on hydrogen fuel cell backup. A floating Hindenburg!
Funny idea but I doubt it. The battery would have to be part of the ballast, the ship would roll over if it was ejected.
They might include a way of flooding the battery compartment, that would cripple the ship but better than everyone burning.
Yup – water and batteries. Good combination
If the fire is caught early, maybe they could eject the one battery that is on fire. After closing the door, they could fill the compartment that used to house the batter with water to restore the ballast.
Not sure how the ship would “dump” a battery when it is in port.
In a lot of ports, there are places where the big ships only have a couple of feet of clearance. Even if they are able to dump, I doubt the harbor masters would be very happy with having that big lump of metal blocking their shipping lanes.
I attended a SOLAS conference in Charleston, SC. One of the sessions was arguing for the 50’ project depth for the harbor, and included that large vessels were nearly mud bound in the harbor, that a diver could not service the ship’s bottom, and that efficiency was an issue for plowing mud.
Water and Lithium and high temperature? The practical problem of lithium battery fires is that water is ineffective.
Years ago, as a racetrack fire control technician, we had a magnesium fire – and a 100# Class D fire bottle. We let the fire burn out and then repaired the race track pavement.
The lithium battery problem is related to nuclear reactor core melt, in that at the temperature that may be achieved the metals burn in water releasing the water’s oxygen and hydrogen that burn again.
Seriously though, this seems like the makings of a floating bomb. I can see a “Speed-like” movie being written that has a terrorist organization holding the ship hostage by threatening to bring the lithium battery packs into contact with the sea, and thereby harnessing the violent Lithium + Water reaction to destroy the ship.
Well if it rolls over, that should put the fire out. 🤪
Titanic battery more like it.
Solar power in the arctic circle?
Makes sense in the northern hemisphere summer.
Of about 3 months……..
Even then, the sun is low on the horizon, which means that the amount of sunlight is reduced.
Which — presumably — is the reason for the vertical solar “sails” rather than a horizontal canopy of solar panels. Still, since the intent seems to be to charge this monstrosity in port, the reconfigurable solar panels seem like questionable and complex feature that’s likely to be more trouble than it’s worth. One would think a modest diesel backup capability would be more practical. Submarines have been doing that for over a century.
On the other hand, this looks like a golly-gee-whiz-everybody-look-at-me undertaking. Pragmatism? Not a major design consideration.
Even with vertical sails, the sunlight still has to pass through much more atmosphere in order to reach the solar panels, including all the dust and water vapor that is in that atmosphere.
“Solar power in the arctic circle?”
One of the research facilities in the interior of Antarctica (I forget which) is solar powered. Sort of makes sense when you consider the grief and aggravation involved in getting fossil fuel to a facility there. It’s heavily insulated and only occupied in Summer of course. And for all I know, it might be a truly miserable place to work.
They aren’t solar powered, they use solar to conserve diesel fuel. As you point out diesel fuel is very expensive down there. They also have batteries that have enough capacity to keep the facility running while the diesel generators are cranked up.
“Imports In 2021, Norway imported $463M in Electricity, becoming the 34th largest importer of Electricity in the world.”
That’s total imports for a country with population 5 million. (i.e. not in the top 20 for USA states… Wisconsin sized)
So every man, woman and toddler cost almost $100 to import electrons from another country. While they exported oil. Sovereign wealth fund. Sigh.
Norway had a net export of 15 TWh electrical energy in 2021….we are amongst the very few nations on this planet with more than 50% of the total energy consumption as electrical energy, more than 98% renewables in electricity production.
Yes, we import electricity. But we export much more.
Actually I was wrong. Norwegian import of electricity in 2021 was 8.2 TWh, and export was 25.8 TWh. The net exchange, in our favour, was 17.6 TWh.
That is on an overall production of 150 TWh.
Perspectives, KevinM. They matter.
I’m sure there will be plenty of EU climate angst citizens willing to try this marketing ploy adventure. Don’t think the Norwegian cruise ship company has yet thought thru the port of call electrical grid infrastructure requirements. Those massive improvements should come out of only their pockets.
One other problem. Sails work like vertical airfoil (Bernoulli physics) ‘wings’. To provide forward ‘lift’ they must be significantly curved and mostly vertical. That means the solar panels covering them will have a very low capacity factor—to the point of marketing window dressing rather than any useful daytime solar PV. Plus if they mostly cruise the near Arctic there isn’t a whole lot of sunlight for half the year. In Helsinki in Feb (been there done that) the sun rises at 10 am and sets at 2 pm. And Helsinki is at a lower latitude than much of the western Norway coast.
Vertically mounted panels would be close to optimum for operating in the Arctic Circle.
South Pole currently gets the highest monthly sunlight but North Pole is not far behind. Think of July cruise under midnight sun. Vertical panels almost perfectly aligned to sun at midnight.
Vertical panels would be almost optimum for any port north of Oslo in December that still gets sun but do they actually do winter cruises. They probably need to have ice breaking capability.
Short cruise season
Vertical may work well when the sails are perpendicular to the sun. However, in order to catch wind, the sails will have be set based on the angle of the wind, not the angle of the sun.
If the sails are edge on to the sun, they won’t be catching any sunlight, regardless of how long the sun is above the horizon.
The term”sail” is used loosely. They are retractable vertical solar panels for collecting electrical energy rather than producing a force. They would likely be retracted in strong winds to reduce bending loads.
Assuming that is the case, and the article itself does not seem to support your belief.
1) Unless the ship is sailing due east or due west, the sails are going to end up shading each other.
2) When the sails are up, they are going to increase aerodynamic drag. Now aerodynamic drag is a lot less than drag from the water, but then again, the sails aren’t producing much power in the best case.
3) By lifting so much mass well above the water line, they are making the ship less stable. The only way to counter this is to increase ballast. Increasing ballast means the ship will settle lower into the water, which increases drag.
In other words, the solar panel sails are nothing more than expensive virtue signalling.
The article speaks of “raising the sails” in windy conditions. That sounds like the primary purpose was for propulsion. Adding solar panels was marketing.
Aligning the solar cells to be perpendicular to the sun is not an issue … any form of solar panel can be rotated.
The problem in the Arctic is that, no matter how the panels are aligned relative to the direction of the sunlight, the density of the sunlight is still very low as one approaches the poles, vs. highest at the equator. At the very pole itself, the incident sunlight density approaches zero.
Pedant alert:
Norwegian (NCL) is a cruise company (and very good) based in the USA
Hurtigruten is a cruise company based in Norway
Pedant alert!
Hurtigruten means ‘fast route’, hurtig = fast & ruten = route. I’m three weeks into learning Norwegian Bokmål.
Hurtigruten AS is the result of a merger between the two previous operators of the Hurtigruten service, Troms Fylkes Dampskibsselskap (TFDS) and Ofotens og Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab (OVDS). TFDS was founded in 1866, and OVDS was established in 1868. The two companies merged in March 2006 to form Hurtigruten Group ASA, and twelve months later the merged entity assumed the name Hurtigruten ASA. (Wikipedia)
Learned a new thing… “Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), also known in short as Norwegian, is an American cruise line founded in 1966, incorporated in Bermuda and headquartered in Miami”
Thanks, I’d always thought that despite being American today that they had a history in actual Norway.
Also. How expensive was that Hurtigruten ship (Hurtigruten = actual Norway)? Cost of goods would be high, but imagine the engineering, finance and regulatory?!
Hurtigruten are very expensive anyway
My premium cabin is ~US$5,000
I believe Havila Kystruten AS has installed fossil fueled ICE battery chargers in selected ports. Quay side, they are as large as small houses in the coincidental images that I have seen.
“fossil fueled ICE battery chargers”
The Havila Kystruten vessels have battery capacity around 6 MWh. They charge them using their LBSI gas engines (Bergen Engines B36). There are no shore based fossil fuels charging stations.
Lefty greenies always conveniently ignore all the FF required to get to a point where (they feel) that you can then drop FF and go on all electric. They imagine some magic hump once passed you can just go all electric. It never happens, in fact, the opposite. Having all these electric machines requires EVEN MORE FF to keep it all going. I know these types of people, they are overly idealistic.
Well gee….at least they’d have plenty of water to put out a battery fire! But seriously, for anything other than limited excursions (day trips, river cruises), this sounds like a really bad idea. For one thing, if there is a problem with the battery(s), would there be an emergency back up power source? Like a diesel generator? Such as, emergency lighting and other emergency systems.
And then there’s the issue of a battery fire…..the Titanic had around 3 hours to load and launch its lifeboats (such few in number as they were, and the lack of urgency to use them) but an electric ship with a combusting battery may have mere minutes. Passengers and crew would be lucky to be able to get their life jackets on and jump overboard (and then hope for rescue before they die of hypothermia – yes, despite the “fact” that the planet is near boiling, one can still die of hypothermia in some places….).
And finally, if e-ships are as expensive as EVs, that’s going to truly be a Titanic first class passenger list on the maiden voyage.
Hmmm….maybe the less well heeled will be placed in cabins below deck, down close to where the batteries are.
I’m sure it will be fully subsidized. Which means, the people paying for it will be the ones least able to afford the tickets.
Uh … So they could never “sail” out of range of Norway?
Just how far could this thing “sail”? What ports could it reach that had the infrastructure in place to recharge the batteries for an entire ship quickly, “clean energy” or not?
Sounds like a “puddle jumper” rather than a cruise ship.
Read: 300 – 350 nautical miles.
Judging by EVs, the range will be up to 359 miles
In real life, this will mean about 600 yards 🤣🤣🤣
Thank you, Dave. I skimmed over that part.
Recharge 7 or 8 times on an 11 day round trip?
So, yes. A “puddle jumper” rather than a cruise ship.
As others have mentioned, megawatt is a unit of power. Megawatt-hours is a unit of storage.
Allow me to use an example that will be more familiar to most people.
Assume a pump attached to a tank.
If someone tells me that the pump is capable of pulling 100 gallons/minute out of the tank, that is equivalent to MegaWatts.
If someone then tells me that the tank holds 1000 gallons. That is the storage. From there I can calculate that the tank holds 1000 gallon minutes of water.
So the tank will be empty in 10 minutes. 😎
FWIW a small, unmanned, solar powered watercraft actually did make it across the Atlantic in 2022. On it’s second try. With stops for minor tweaks (i.e. repairs) in the Azores and Nova Scotia. Of course it’s a huge jump from a 15 meter trimaran to a full blown cruise ship. But a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single emergency stop to fix a few things.
And yes, it had a backup generator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_AI_sea_drone
Ah yes, the “backup generator.” Amazing how all this “new technology” needs to be backed up, yet the technology they want to “transition” from never “required” backup SAILS.
Not so. Sailing vessels were frequently towed out of doldrums, some famously. Worse, see kedging, in which an anchor was rowed ahead, dropped, and then the ship hauled up to the kedge anchor by windless – by hand.
I was talking about diesel powered ships not needing “backup” by wind power, whereas wind does need backup, as does solar.
If wind/solar is supposed to be newer/better “technology,” why does the “old tech” still need to be ready to rescue it?!
😎
The Gossamer Albatross flew the English Channel with “human power”.
(But I doubt if Superman or Captain Marvel are available to make it practical.)
A couple of points, the battery could be lead acid, if it’s in the ballast compartments of the ship, weight is not an issue. Hence fire risk could be quite low.
Secondly, the description of the battery being 60MW, what is that meant to mean? Is it 60MW max output? How long will it supply that power for? I really hate poor press releases, missing all the important details and no one in the audience sending back a sensible question. If it was for two hours, (like a typical urban grid battery pack), then that’s only 120MWHr. In comparison, a typical electric car uses a 50 to 100 kWHr battery, so this number seems incredibly low. Water has a much higher friction value, and the boat is a lot, lot bigger. It will also need a lot of heating in the arctic. Maybe the number should be closer to 1.2GWHr, who knows?
Anyway, lets make another really bad assumption that it is for 2 hours. We know it will need to recharge at port, several times during a cruise. If we again make a gross assumption of say 4 hours at port for a 50% recharge, that means a 15MW charge rate. That’s a big cable you got there. I wonder who pays for the port infrastructure to be upgraded. I wonder what happens if there is a sudden stop to the charging, will those little towns on the edge of the Norwegian fjords get a power surge to match?
I can see a lot of problems here. And then you add saltwater. What could go wrong?
They’ll really be pinin’ for the fjords then.
The battery is 60MWh. I doubt cruise speed will be above 15kts. So 20 hours for 300nm. Engines with total rating of 3MW might be enough for a 130m ship to do 15kts.
The current fleet is upgrading to Bergen twin engines that would give installed power of 5.4MW for each engine. Reducing top speed and going for efficiency could bring demand down substantially.
In the sales pitch, they mention automated cleaning. Fouling is a big factor in ship drag.
Where did you get the 60MWHr from,it’s not in the article. Re-reading the article suggests that they will use 60MW batteries. More than one???
https://www.hurtigruten.com.au/destinations/norway/the-original-norwegian-coastal-express/sea-zero/the-worlds-most-energy-efficient-cruise-ship/?_its=JTdCJTIydmlkJTIyJTNBJTIyMzZmZTRhZDAtZTg2Ny00MzYyLThkMmMtZWM4YTQyOTQyNGYyJTIyJTJDJTIyc3RhdGUlMjIlM0ElMjJybHR%2BMTY4NjgxNTcyNn5sYW5kfjJfODY0NF9zZW9fYzZmYTk5ZjY5MTQ4ZTFmMjA3YzUwMzVhMTYzODQ5ZjMlMjIlMkMlMjJzaXRlSWQlMjIlM0E0NTUlN0Q%3D
From the sales pitch:
Yeah, I read it as they would have more than one battery.
Can you show where you are getting your figures from?
There may be many candlelight dinners.
What is the electrical load for lighting, heating, cooking, air and water circulation, etc? The batteries may have nothing to do with propulsion.
60 mwh, not 60 mw. Meaning the full capacity, new battery in perfect condition, fully charged, can provide 60 mw for one hour. Or 30 mw for two hours. That’s electrical power, not actual power at the propulsor (screw, jet pump, whatever). Propulsive power is less due to friction and heating.
Keep in mind, the battery provides not just propulsive power, but also must supply “hotel loads”, which in marine engineering parlance means all the other power demands necessary to operate the ship. Including HVAC (a large demand), lighting, utilities (water & sanitation), ship controls, security, comms, everything. So the battery can’t be run down to zero and then have a ship that is anything but an extremely unpleasant death trap for all aboard.
It would be extremely unsafe to run the battery down to less than 40% of published capacity.
Also, a ship whose stored propulsive power is dropped to a relatively low value is extremely unsafe, subject to broaching and capsizing in a heavy sea, or running onto shoals, reefs, rocks, the beach, etc.
Having a large battery in a ship is normal design practice in all ships and submarines, so the risk of seawater intrusion is no worse than with any other ship regardless of propulsion. If you’re getting seawater into the battery, then you have much bigger problems – i.e., the ship is sinking.
“60 mwh, not 60 mw”
Beware lower-case. 60 milliwatt seems a little small…
“I really hate poor press releases, missing all the important details…” Someone able to see (unable to not see?) the important details will not be writing press releases for a living. That being said, incomplete writing is my favorite complaint to register. We exist… might as well learn what we’re talking about while we’re here. We may have interrupted the author’s learning process. Or, we might BE the author’s learning process
As always with solar, when the sun doesn’t shine, then what? It is extremely risky and life threatening to be in an ocean going vessel with no propulsion, and of course all of the “ hotel loads” (HVAC, refrigeration, cooking, hot water for bathing and laundry, plus of course all of the electronic devices and appliances) have to be supplied 24/7/365.
So of course it is impossible, not just improbable, for a cruise ship to ever be zero emissions … unless they use a nuclear power plant … and even then, not so. All nuke power plants on vessels and land must have auxiliary diesel generators.
The sales pitch is about educating their passengers on zero emission. They will use phone applications to keep track of personal energy usage while on board. Things like the amount of water used and the temperature will be monitored and accumulated.
This is their sales pitch for Sea Zero:
https://global.hurtigruten.com/destinations/norway/the-original-norwegian-coastal-express/sea-zero/#inspired-by-possibility
“The sales pitch is about educating their passengers on zero emission.”
Yes, they should be thoroughly educated after the first trip.
The longer the trip, the more educated they’ll be!
“Things like the amount of water used and the temperature will be monitored and accumulated.”
Sales pitch? They just drove off people who don’t want their hygiene measured and saved. I know people made big arguments about Internet stock trading and credit card spending and social media. Maybe privacy is an antiquated concept? Increasingly I feel like the world’s gone Pickard and I’m still thinking it’s Kirk.
They will be learning quite quickly how unpleasant a life using only renewable energy will be.
Just how high is the hull of this boat?
By the sounds of it this rising ‘sail’ would be tens of metres beneath the keel of the boat when retracted. Essentially a keel, with an enormous drag factor.
And all those nice solar panels exposed to a regular soaking with salt water.
This is the type of fantasy aspiring academics are exposed to. Nor do I mean engineers, who would likely welcome the challenge, but quickly condemn it as a daft idea.
Women and children first…….
Maybe the sails can be folded up when they are lowered?
That sounds like a recipe for a failure of one of many moving parts.
Hinges are also heavier. Something that matters on a ship.
Can’t wait to read the article about all the Billionaire Elite lining up to convert their yachts to sail and solar.
The irony…
If you’re a billionaire you can probably set out in the yacht as early as you’d like.
But.
If you’re the kind of personality willing to enjoy a yacht ride for that long, you’re probably not a billionaire.
I’ve heard flawed business ideas based on “rich people will buy it” as if rich people just walked around buying things with their own money, like rich people money comes from a magic espresso pot that no one else is trying to get at. The magic espresso pot for misguided inventions like battery powered cruise ships is the government subsidy. That _used_to_ mean tax dollars, aka my money. Now it means government debt dollars, aka my kids money.
Use of “ alternative energy” in the maritime industry is a another thing that has been studied extensively, experimented with, had lots of money spent on studies by naval architects and ultimately found not practical an uneconomical. But if they try really really hard and spend enough money maybe they can change the laws of physics
That’s the way to go. Hire the best lawyers.
…spend enough (other people’s) money…
The first nuclear powered USA aircraft carrier was fantastic – it threw a wake that would give ski jumpers nightmares. Thus the USN fleet went nuclear and absorbed engineers who took a chance on nuclear degrees for half a century.
And it was the optimal way to make long range ballistic submarines
My prediction is it won’t be built.
“set to launch in 2030”
I don’t knows what tech will exist by 2030. Both Wright Bros might be surprised to see a Boeing 777.
With 2023 tech… you sound right.
How long does it take to build such a ship?
AI could do this. Would AI do this so I could cruise up the coast of Norway for the cost of an Uber? I’d roll the dice on Terminator-movie-world if I got to cruise the arctic circle first.
So you’re banking on the “magic battery” coming into fruition in the next seven years.
If “AI” or anyone else could “do this,” in such a short time horizon, why not just go all the way and invent cold fusion, and nobody would need to worry about the “range” of any transport, the grid, HVAC needs, etc.
At least there’s probably a better chance of surviving a voyage on one of these than surviving a flight on an electric aircraft.
If Amazon finds a way to scale up electric drones, electric aircraft odds will improve greatly.
The problem with that being, the bigger the payload, the bigger, and heavier, the battery, which just adds to the weight of the whole thing.
Small devices with light payloads aren’t that hard, obviously (see drones). Scaling them up to carry hundreds or thousands of pounds (and carry that load for any meaningful distance) is a whole different story.
There’s been plenty of nuclear powered submarines, aircraft carriers, ice breakers etc. for decades that have a proven safety record. If emissions from cruise ships, tankers, freighters etc. are actually a problem that needs to be dealt with then nuclear is a ready to use technology if only eco-nutters weren’t so dogmatic and anti technology.
Exactly, old proven propulsion systems. We steamed with CGN-25 in the early 70’s
and that was something to see when they pulled the control rods..500ft+beast get up
and run like a PBR, shooting a rooster tail up higher than the bridge
over 1/4 mile long. Eco-nutters indeed..if the cruse liners were to build something
like that there would be a waiting list for cruises years long.
If the cruise ship were to go that fast, the cruise would be over before you could unpack.
Chubby middle-aged suburban men knee-boarding in the rooster tail of a nuclear cruise ship, possibly with 1980’s arena rock blasting in their earbuds. Wow, A decade ago, they could have written “Charley don’t surf” on their kneeboard. Woke generation will require a search engine to become upset by the image.
PBR?
Patrol Boat, River, used in Vietnam.
Bicycle powered backup generators!
Put those passengers to work if they want to get back to port.
A great idea. Lose weight while cruising and saving the planet.
Don’t forget the whips…
Costs extra?
Gotta work off those fancy dinners.
so we add one.
over fed. newly wed. nearly dead.
and now:
misled
Solar panels in the sails, you say?
Let’s do some maths.
They say it is 50 meters tall, and let’s be generous and say it’s 200 meters long.
That’s 10000 square meters of solar PV, and let’s also be generous and assume a PV output of 100 watts per square meter for 10 hours per day in summer at northern latitudes. (100 watts per square meter is an average of 10% PV efficiency, which would be very difficult to achieve whilst trying to trim sails for both wind and solar optimization.)
So that gives us 10,000 * 100 * 10 = 10 megawatt hours per day, best case scenario.
Enough to travel 30 miles, or 1/10 of their stated 60 mwh battery capacity.
Clearly, the PV sails are a marketing, not an engineering, decision.
It’s not just trimming the sails to the wind, but you also have the problem that even in the middle of the summer, the sun is still not all that high above the horizon, even at mid day.
These means that the sunlight will have to pass through that much more atmosphere, including all the dust and water vapor that is in the atmosphere.
Secondly, in order to maximize the efficiency of the sails, you want the sails to be as close to vertical as possible. That means that if the sun is 40 degrees above the horizon, then it’s 40 degrees off vertical in regards to the solar panels. That’s a pretty big drop in available power all by itself.
Time for a reality check:
1) “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.” This certainly implies the solar PV cells on the “sails” will be oriented at an overall low angle with respect to peak solar radiation coming mostly from around the zenith. Probably drops the daylight-average efficiency of solar-derived power by 70% or more compared to solar PV panels that are oriented normal to incoming sunlight.
2) Very difficult to have rigid solar PV cells attached to flexible sail fabric. And I can only wonder about the reliability of electrical wiring connecting all the solar cells which may have to furl/unfurl, oh, maybe once per day on average. Alternatively, rigid “sails” are not very efficient across a range of wind velocities. And, BTW, electrical wiring is basically just not all that compatible with the saltwater, marine environment . . . talk to any mariner.
3) Gee . . . I wonder what percent of the time clouds form over marine navigation routes, not to mention tropical storms, hurricanes and cyclones?
4) Using the quoted figure of 1,500 m^2 of solar PV-covered area with today’s commercial PV cells delivering a peak of around 160 watts/m^2 given direct normal solar incidence on a clear day, but using a knockdown factor of 0.7 to account for the solar incidence being highly off-normal and the sail-mounted solar cell area not tracking the sun across the sky, one would expect that the peak solar PV powered capable of being generated would only be around 72 kW. Compare that to the claimed ship battery capacity of 60 MW and you can see that the ratio is 0.072/60 = 0.1% . . . doesn’t even amount to a trickle charge under full sunny skies! Of course, there’s no PV power generated if the sails are to used during the nighttime and dusk or dawn.
I wonder how much weight those solar panels are going to add to the “sails”. Going to need even more ballast to keep the ship stable.
More ballast means the ship will ride lower in the water, resulting in more drag.
I wonder is the sails will be able to generate enough power to overcome the cost of raising them.
Might as well add wind sails to those solar sails. Back to the way it was in the 1700s/early 1800s.
I just started laughing and can’t stop
I think the next big thing for the Net-Zero Eco Nuts, will be to simply ban any activity that uses water or fossil fuels to do, what exactly? Allow people to travel around for no explicit reason, taking pictures, gambling, and drinking enormous quantities of booze?
No, ban all cruises. Scrap the ships. People shouldn’t be allowed to do this.
And while we’re at it, ban all golf courses. They consume enormous quantities of water and for what? Close all golf courses, especially in the American southwest. Do you know Phoenix AZ has around 200 golf courses? In the middle of the desert? Ban it all, revert these courses to the desert.
This may be “/sarc” today, but just wait.
I’m an avid cruiser.
A cat has more chance in hell than Hurtigruten have got of getting me on that ship
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?