The world’s most energy-efficient cruise ship

[hallasm]

Hurtigruten is introducing the zero-emission ship of the future, for the future.

 

Together with a consortium of 12 maritime partners and research institute SINTEF, Hurtigruten is presenting a concept designs of their first zero-emission ship that will sail on the Norwegian coast in 2030.  
 

The world’s most energy-efficient cruise ship - Press release

Edited June 10, 2023 by hallasm

[Flyinby]

On 6/10/2023 at 1:49 PM, hallasm said:

Hurtigruten is introducing the zero-emission ship of the future, for the future.

 

Together with a consortium of 12 maritime partners and research institute SINTEF, Hurtigruten is presenting a concept designs of their first zero-emission ship that will sail on the Norwegian coast in 2030.  
 

The world’s most energy-efficient cruise ship - Press release

 

This sounds great if they can make it work.  I was surprised to see they were considering only electric options (and sail, if that works out) for recharging...that's quite a transition to have ready by 2030.  Then I realized they may be thinking of shorter routes between stops, with recharging at the stops (like the coastal express route) which would be more feasible than anything where they'd be at sea for several days.

 

On our recent Havila coastal trip, in one of the daily talks they spoke about how the ships were designed to be convertible from LP or biofuel to hydrogen, when the technology allows.  That sounds more feasible to me, at least in the short term.  Batteries are still large and heavy, so a hybrid design that would have zero emissions, and be less dependent on shore power seems to me like a more immediate solution.  The current ships (Havila's) can run for several hours on battery-only, but taking away the onboard source of charging power, that's only practical for shorter runs with many stops that can provide charging.

 

Then there are passenger needs.  Lighting isn't a huge drain, but heat or air conditioning is, and I know there have been cases of engineers "forgetting" that passengers have needs too, when calculating the range of a ship on battery or fuel.

 

So maybe they'll surprise me and get there by 2030...certainly we'll get there eventually, but there are still a lot of issues for something like this.  Even transporting cars, now that lithium battery power is getting more common, has some real issues...if there's ever a fire, they're going to need a fast and safe way to deal with it when out at sea, and I'm not sure that exists yet.

 

Thanks for the link...very interesting and definitely heading in the right direction.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Flyinby
and

[hallasm]

7 hours ago, Flyinby said:

Then I realized they may be thinking of shorter routes between stops, with recharging at the stops (like the coastal express route) which would be more feasible than anything where they'd be at sea for several days.

Yes, the Sea Zero initiative is specifically designed for operation along the coast of Norway. There is not that far between ports so it will also be possible to charge ships - they expect that charging can take place at half of the ports on the route between Bergen and Kirkenes.

[philbob84]

This ship looks incredible. Ponant is also doing something simiar.