German cargo ship to be propelled by kite-power

Life Technology
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Interesting article from my old home town newspaper.

[quote]German cargo ship to be propelled by kite-power
By ERIK KIRSCHBAUM, Reuters

BREMEN, Germany – Putting a harness on ocean winds, a German shipping company plans to unfurl a giant high-tech kite over a cargo ship next year to boost the vessel’s propulsion and conserve fuel.

The “SkySail,” a 191-square-yard kite tethered to a mast, has successfully undergone years of trial runs, and Bremen ship owner Beluga Shipping believes it will help its vessels cut fuel use by 15 percent to 20 percent.

The MV Beluga SkySails, now being built and fitted with a paraglider-shaped sail and a “smart” central steerage unit, will make its maiden voyage in early 2007.

“I got the idea on a sailboat a few years ago,” Stephan Wrage, inventor and founder of SkySails GmbH & Co. KG, told Reuters. “I love flying kites and found sailing rather slow. I thought the enormous power in kites could somehow be utilized.”

The technology he has developed is a throwback to an earlier age of maritime travel when ships relied solely on wind. But it also addresses a key concern of the modern age: climate change.

Backers of SkySail call it a “green” project – by cutting fuel use it could help reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Wrage, 34, said that depending on the vessel and the winds, fuel costs for shippers could be cut by more than $1,000 a day.

After four years of successful tests, it is anything but a pie-in-the-sky project.

The inventor first tested a prototype of the SkySail on a 11.5-foot boat, then gradually increased the size of the craft before testing it last year on a 55-meter (180-foot) vessel, the Beaufort.

SkySail’s price tag – $660,000 to $3.3 million – along with doubts it will deliver promised savings and its reliance on fickle ocean winds could limit demand at first.

Wrage said ships will initially need to carry an engineer to operate the sail, which is about as big as a medium-size passenger jet.

“It’s going to save money in the long run, and it’s environmentally friendly,” said Verena Frank, project manager at Beluga, a shipping firm with 40 vessels.

“We’ve integrated the system into our new ship from the start of construction, but ships can also be retro-fitted,” she said in an interview in this windswept northern port city with a rich seafaring tradition dating back to the 8th century.

“Ours will be the first commercial use in cargo shipping,” Frank said. “There will be some teething pains,” she added.

SkySails can use powerful offshore winds between 325 and 950 feet above the surface with the help of the high-tech control pod, but they would be useless with head-on winds and would not benefit ships traveling above 16 knots.

The sails are unlikely to make much of an immediate impact on the overall fuel and environment problems facing shippers.

Shipping carries more than 90 percent of the world’s traded goods. There are 30,000 merchant ships carrying oil, gas, coal, grain and electronic goods.

Wrage has a staff of 33 and in 2007 expects to equip three more ships with the SkySail. He projects 1,500 vessels will have the system by 2015, when he reckons he will have 800 employees.

“It was important for me to prove that you can make money working hand in hand with nature and not against it,” he said.

“I think there could be a lot more linking of ecology and economy.”
ocregister.com/ocregister/he … 374260.php[/quote]
The OC Register is usually a “register & read” site. I guess this ones a freebie… :slight_smile:

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That’s a very good idea.

This is a great quote:

[quote]“It was important for me to prove that you can make money working hand in hand with nature and not against it,” he said.
“I think there could be a lot more linking of ecology and economy.”[/quote]
I sometimes wonder economic models and prices of goods could be adapted to reflect their true longterm cost including the use of resources. I find it quite disturbing that ordinary goods are shipped across the globe when it would conserve resources to produce them locally. But it looks as if this situation isn’t going to change in a hurry.

In the meantime, ideas such as this, which make even short-term economic sense, are very good to be going on with.

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[quote=“joesax”]That’s a very good idea.

This is a great quote:

[quote]“It was important for me to prove that you can make money working hand in hand with nature and not against it,” he said.
“I think there could be a lot more linking of ecology and economy.”[/quote]
I sometimes wonder economic models and prices of goods could be adapted to reflect their true longterm cost including the use of resources. I find it quite disturbing that ordinary goods are shipped across the globe when it would conserve resources to produce them locally. But it looks as if this situation isn’t going to change in a hurry.

In the meantime, ideas such as this, which make even short-term economic sense, are very good to be going on with.[/quote]

While I agree in principle with Joe, the whole issue of ‘energy accounting’ is a bit of a difficult one. For instance, it apparently requires less energy to grow a tomato in Spain and import it to the UK than it does to grow one in the UK. Potatoes, on the other hand, can safely be grown anywhere because the energy required in their production is negligible compared to the energy used in cooking them. Mobile phones, which don’t grow on trees, reportedly use 75Kg of raw materials each in their production.

Here’s a slightly related tidbit: I once bitched to my local MP that his campaign literature didn’t have any label on it declaring his commitment to recycling. He replied that he didn’t recyce paper, and advised me to contact Friends of the Earth. They sent me a copy of their policy document, which stated that, in their opinion, recycling of paper used too much energy and too many nasty chemicals to be considered good practise. They recommended using woodpulp from tree farms.

I don’t know what the current situation is, but I remember being surprised that the ‘obviously right’ practise was not that right after all.

Anything that reduces energy usage is probably good, but in wider terms it seems to be very difficult to agree on what the best policies are.

Back on-topic: I remember reading, over 20 years ago, that Guinness were sonsoring the construction of a small sail-powered cargo ship to deliver their products between various Caribbean Islands. That venture failed commercially, but happily the ship found a new vocation as a live-aboard dive platform in Australia.

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[quote=“tmwc”]While I agree in principle with Joe, the whole issue of ‘energy accounting’ is a bit of a difficult one. For instance, it apparently requires less energy to grow a tomato in Spain and import it to the UK than it does to grow one in the UK. Potatoes, on the other hand, can safely be grown anywhere because the energy required in their production is negligible compared to the energy used in cooking them. Mobile phones, which don’t grow on trees, reportedly use 75Kg of raw materials each in their production.

Here’s a slightly related tidbit: I once bitched to my local MP that his campaign literature didn’t have any label on it declaring his commitment to recycling. He replied that he didn’t recyce paper, and advised me to contact Friends of the Earth. They sent me a copy of their policy document, which stated that, in their opinion, recycling of paper used too much energy and too many nasty chemicals to be considered good practise. They recommended using woodpulp from tree farms.

I don’t know what the current situation is, but I remember being surprised that the ‘obviously right’ practise was not that right after all.

Anything that reduces energy usage is probably good, but in wider terms it seems to be very difficult to agree on what the best policies are.

Back on-topic: I remember reading, over 20 years ago, that Guinness were sonsoring the construction of a small sail-powered cargo ship to deliver their products between various Caribbean Islands. That venture failed commercially, but happily the ship found a new vocation as a live-aboard dive platform in Australia.[/quote]TMWC, you make good points. But I think it’s very important that this isn’t taken as some kind of excuse for not doing anything, along the lines of “well those enviromentalists can’t agree on anything anyway so I might as well just do what I want”. I don’t think this is what you mean at all. But I think there’s a danger some people could adopt this viewpoint.

You made the point of tomatoes. I don’t know the facts about that, but from my point of view the common sense thing to do would be to try and buy more fruit and veg which grow well in the native environment, and which have been grown there. Of course one shouldn’t be too uptight about these kinds of things. I shared a house once with some people who criticised me for using herbal teabags instead of loose herbs! That’s going too far I think. But still, making a small effort can make a big difference over a while.

And regarding recycling paper, the FOE guy you spoke to said that paper made from spare woodpulp was better, so more research and publicity of the results is needed it seems. But I don’t imagine that he was recommending using non-recycled paper as an alternative. Just that woodpulp paper was even better than recycled paper.

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I think the problem is that the truth is too complex to be easily disseminated to the general public. Most people just can’t be bothered to think in any detail and want a soundbite solution.

So you get shallow sensationalist reporting which doesn’t really explore the issue, and that leads to policies which are politically convenient but may not actually do any good. And any criticism leads to, as you point out, the ‘business as usual’ camp refusing to accept that there is any problem.

Still, wind-powered ships seem like a bit of a no-brainer. One day, even oil tankers will have sails…

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Will there be any oil in them then?

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On the other hand, some of the ‘wisdom’ that has become accepted generally is sometimes a bit questionnable. The green camp have a tendency to hang on to their dogma’s in the face of rational questions, probably because that’s the only way to get any kind of consistent message out.

For instance, I saw a TV documentary once about Mt Erebus in Antarctica. This volcano started erupting in the early 1970’s and has been spewing out ozone-destroying gases ever since. After about ten years, there was a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica, which has been blamed on industrial emissions in the northern hemisphere.

I heard that Mt Erebus produces something like ten times as much ozone destroying gas as all industry combined every year. And it’s right under the hole. I searched once to try and get figures on this, but couldn’t find any. Surely someone somewhere has done some research to define the size of the problem? Wouldn’t that be a good idea before we start outlawing refrigerators?

Here’s a view at the BBC that puts what I’m trying to say fairly succinctly.

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[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Interesting article from my old home town newspaper.

[/quote]

You know, an added bonus is that if that boat ever fell out of a plane, it would be OK. And I bet they didn’t even think about that.

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Is that a real or a doctored “artist’s impression?” Because I can see men on the foredeck there and judging from their size, that sail looks like a normal parasail.

But Stu’s observation is probably more astute. In fact, we all know aeroplanes travel faster than ships, so with this new sail technology, you could just put the ships in planes and push them out when they approach their destination. It would save weeks and weeks of travel time. Not so useful for places like Kazakhstan and such, I don’t suppose, but for anywhere with a coastline it would be great.

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Here is the manufacturer’s site, with more pictures and a movie: SkySails

Seems indeed not very big that sail.