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Greetings all,

I thought this photo at the Hafengeburtstag in Hamburg was interesting ...



... as right alongside the pretty wooden boats was docked a solar powered catamaran? trimaran? not sure, which then led to this photo ...



... and I thought the boat was very cool looking; rather Star Trek'ish in execution ... which then led to these photos







which led to these ...







which leads me to want to ask the following question ...

What is with the low rpm high pitch counter rotating propellers that sit halfway out of the water?

I thought the whole point of a prop was to get it as low down in the water as possible for best efficiency.

For a boat load more photos  ;D ... http://www.planetsolar.org/multimedia-photos.en.php

Cheers,
Tom

One more for good measure ...

Greetings all,

There are some funky 3-D photos where you can "turn around" inside the photo window at http://www.planetsolar.org/multimedia-photos360.en.php

I liked the second one the best ... http://www.planetsolar.org/panorama/pano...urg-2010-2

... and videos at http://www.planetsolar.org/multimedia-videos.en.php

Cheers,
Tom

This boat is a bit of ridiculousness and big money rolled into a "green" package that is unsustainable. Someone got sold a bill of goods that hasn't delivered yet. It's often getting towed, usually can't maintain hull speed and has a host of nightmarish electronic issues, it constantly is doing battle with. This particular vessel has been the entertainment value of a well acted comedy, on other discussions forums and about as big a boondoggle as you could ask for. The best part is they keep "spinning" it to be the come all and go all of green technologies and environmentally sound engineering, when in fact, it's never preformed up to expectations, is constantly under repair and lots of oil/coal was burned and trees cut to not only service the machine, but generate the raw materials that went into it.

About the props, yea, someone got the idea of using surface piercing props, which are the least efficient, then partially shrouded them, making for even more loses, just to prove a point?

It's an aircraft carrier of solar panels that can't even do hull speed. A lot of laughing enjoyment for me to say the least. I just wish I knew some of the owners so I could sell them some "Everglades" water front property I own. Say, I wonder how many and how long it takes, to wash the sea gull poop off that array each morning, lest they loose some generating ability . . .

Greetings Paul,

Yes, I thought the boat would have troubles moving. The web site indicates that the boat weighs 95 tons, and has 537+ square meters of solar cells producing 94 kW, or about 127 hp.  Seeing that everything else on the boat is electric, you probably get to use only a quarter of that for powering the motors, (lest the beer get warm, plus you have to charge the batteries, and you should be able to charge the batteries and motor at the same time or you will not have power through the night) and that means less than 0.25 hp per ton, which is way, way under the 2 to 4 hp per ton desired for off-shore work. And even if you consider the efficiency of the thin pontoon hulls, and the low windage hull, the boat is still way under powered.

I think this one heard you, and is thinking evil thoughts ...



But you have to admit, she's a cool looking boat ...





Cheers,
Tom

Some people thought Lady GaGa's meat suit was good looking too . . .

Talk about a fool and his money.....8)8)8)

BAH HUMBUG PAUL!!!  LOL...WHo is lady naga?  Cool find...bummer that it has not worked out...

One question I dont understand---if you want to go enviro-friendly---arent wind driven sails as clean as you can go...with some solar to run other things??

I agree with tom----it looks coooool!

I wonder how far into the side of a dolphin or fish you can drive those wave piercing hulls at top speed? Yes, sail power is quite green. As has been the biggest problem with all solar power in the last 4 decades and still haunts it, is storage. This of course limits range and speed, making this approach not practical, even if you have 10's of millions to throw at the issues like this project. The solar folks have been saying just wait, in the next 10 years we'll have a break through and things will be different. Naturally, they've been saying this since I was a kid, so it's had to take them seriously any more, especially when then have something like the above, putting around the Med at 4 MPH hoping their battery supply will last until sun rise . . . Hell you could populate the deck with tree huggers and long oars and get it moving faster then that!

Greetings all,

I think it is even worse than Paul says. I have a passing interest in energy from a total systems standpoint, and my understanding is that solar panels are nothing more than batteries. I remember stumbling across some scholarly research that showed that solar panels require something in excess of 7 years of continuous operation to generate as much energy as was required to manufacture the panel in the first place. You will never come close to 7 years of continuous operation on a boat (even at 4 knots, the boat will eventually get all the way around the world), so the panel is a net drain. Furthermore, the manufacturing processes to mine the quartz, grow the crystals, deposit the metal films, etc, are much "dirtier" in turns of greenhouse gas emissions than if you just burned the fossil fuels to push the boat around. And you still have to add the energy costs of manufacturing and eventual recycling of the storage batteries. So from a true "green" prospective, the solar panel and its support systems, and hence this boat also, is a total ecological disaster.

I just thought the boat looked cool. Gene Roddenberry would have been proud.

Cheers,
Tom

Gene Roddenberry would have put a saucer section on it, possibly detachable for beach parties and lots of scantly clad, green skinned, horny 18 to 22 year old ladies, for the 40 year old senior crew members to enjoy.

Tom's right, I been relatively nice to the solar crowd, hoping they will not stop hugging my tree. You see when, the end is near and they all die off because their asparagus sprout farms have withered away from some weird, possible petroleum based disorder, I can use their bodies in my furnace, which will keep me warm at night and cook my food and generate steam for my generator . . .