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Wallenius Oceanbird: Wind-powered cargo vessel
- nanna 6y agoAs the OP, I'm confused why the timestamp says it was posted an hour ago when I posted it yesterday, and how it got the subtitle. I'm happy it's on the front page of course, but I don't really get the HN mechanics behind it?
- onion2k 6y agoThis is actually quite interesting from a wind-powered cargo perspective. Normally stories like this are about ships that can carry 2,000 TEUs (a measure of freight containers) while the biggest conventional ships carry 20,000 TEUs. This ship can actually carry 7,000 cars while the biggest conventional car carrier manages 8,500. It's in the same ballpark with far less fuel usage. It could feasibly replace car carriers on routes where wind is an option.
- sradman 6y agoFrom Wikipedia [1]: > The ship will be equipped with five retractable, telescopic wingsails that can rotate 360 degrees. The masts will measure 80 m (260 ft) for a total height above the waterline of 45 to 105 m (148 to 344 ft). That would also make it the tallest ship in the world. The rigging will be made from steel and composite materials and resemble airplane wings. An auxiliary engine will be used to navigate harbors and provide emergency power. > While the design is meant to be usable for different types of ships, the first version is planned to be a 200 m (660 ft) long roll-on/roll-off ship with a capacity of up to 7,000 cars. Such ships will be used on transatlantic routes and are expected to perform the journey in 12 days, longer than the current average of eight. > Open-sea trials with a 7 m (23 ft) prototype were conducted in the summer of 2020 and are scheduled to continue during the fall. Commercial orders are expected to start in 2021, with an entry into service in late 2024. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanbird
- malandrew 6y agoWhat's the cost relationship between the cost for 4 more days versus the fuel savings cost? Also, what percent of the total cost of shipping today is fuel versus other costs like crew and port logistics, etc?
- itismetheidiot 6y agoif this ship is purely wind powered and basis on the published info this seems to be the case, i.e. there is no main engine of any type/fuel for propulsion - commercially it’s not viable. Shipping is highly optimized for arrival to a destination/port on a very narrow time window. Even delays of a couple of hours will be extremely expensive. For example, late arrival to SUEZ means that the vessel will join the end of the convoy at a premium rate costing hundreds of thousands of USD in additional fees. Not only that, Ports and Charterers (Liners) are working basis specific arrival times, you cannot simply arrival late because the wind was not favorable. It could work as an assisting system, such as Flettner rotors , skysails ,etc
- grkvlt 6y agoWell, their website claims "90% lower emissions than a vessel with a diesel engine" so evidently they use some form of engine, or they'd be claiming 100% lower! i would guess it's like most sailing boats, and it has a small(-ish) engine and prop for use when docking/maneuvering up close/no wind, and also a genset for onboard electrical power.
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoIt has an ‘auxiliary engine’ for port manoeuvring and ‘emergency power’. This ship is being designed for the Atlantic route and I imagine will be sailing with the trade winds to get more consistent winds (Clockwise around the Atlantic). The reason this is being built for roro cars rather than traditional cargo is probably due to the logistics.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoIt seems pretty likely that this also has a significant amount of generator capacity on board. Even small sailboats often have to run their engine or generator during passages to top up their battery.
- newsclues 6y agoIf fuel savings are great enough, this could be irrelevant, and planned around. And there could be a premium for the service. I could see Tesla paying extra to ship electric cars with burning bunker fuel. As a customer I’d pay extra for that.
- melomal 6y agoReminded me of a company called Norse Power which is basically retro fitting wind sails to existing fleets. Still in the testing phases but they were saying that the savings on fuel etc were substantial enough to take note. Not the article I read but still some info: https://www.marinelog.com/technology/sea-cargo-to-retrofit-ro-ro-with-tilting-rotor-sails/ https://www.marinelog.com/technology/sea-cargo-to-retrofit-r...
- jerzyt 6y agoI'd pay money to be a passenger on the maiden voyage. They should definitely include a few passenger cabins, as many freighters have. I have never been on a cruise - has zero appeal to me, but this would be awesome. I'd like to see more detail about this project, though. As others have commented, pure wind power is not going to be commercially feasible. There's too much variation in weather to work within current logistics demands. They do anticipate that it will take 12 days to cross the Atlantic, compared to 8 days for fossil fuel vessels. Is that to have enough slack in the schedule to sit idle for the port entry if the winds are good and they arrive early? But, I hope it's a success.
- sradman 6y agoThe Gulf Stream [1] is very real and very consistent. I think we forget the important role this system played in the rise of the United Kingdom and the United States as global powers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream
- _ph_ 6y agoAs the ship also has an engine, the wind situation probably more decides about the amount of fuel used rather than the schedule. But indeed, it would be attractive to have a passenger section.
- runarberg 6y agoI’m guessing that the ship is actually battery powered (or something similar) and the sails are only used as windmills to charge the batteries (or supplement the primary fuel). So unless the wind conditions are really unfavorable you can still have pretty predictable crossing times.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoNo, the renderings are very clearly solid wingsails. People have tried schemes like you suggest with propeller hybrids, but it's much less efficient than just a sail, and a solid wing is about 3x more efficient than a simple sail at the same area. Don't underestimate how much force can be generated by a couple 100 square meters worth of wing.
- anton001 6y agoIs there any connection between this vessel and the shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen? I cannot find any obvious connections apart from the name.
- Ichthypresbyter 6y agoFrom Wikipedia- it's being developed by Wallenius Marine, which is a ship design, building and management company which was spun off Wallenius Lines in 2003 but is still owned by the same group. Wallenius Wilhelmsen seems to be a joint venture of Wallenius Lines of Sweden and Wilh. Wilhelmsen of Norway.
- feb 6y agoThe web site touts that they combat climate change with a nice concept. But it's a bit ironic that the target product the ship will transport are cars, one major consumer of fossil fuels and a big source of CO2.
- msandford 6y agoI know it's a bit impolite to doubt their math on displacement and speed and all that, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me. The boat is 200m long and the sails only occupy about half of that. The all-down configuration is 45m and the all-up is 105m so I'd guess the sails are about 70m tall. So 70 x 100 = 7000 sqm of sail area. That's approx. equivalent in area to a wind turbine with an 83m diameter rotor. Doing one of those online wind turbine calculators with an efficiency of 40% (limit of 59% ala Betz) comes up with about 1.5MW or a little under 2000 horsepower. Most of the big boats like this start around 10,000 hp and only go up from there so I can't help but wonder what's going on here. I guess it could have a very efficient shape and go slower but that seems unlikely to make that big of a difference to me.
- azepoi 6y agoThe target speed is around 10 knots. Commercial cargo vessels are designed at 20-23 knots, some lower at 15-18 knots (slow steaming), rounding it at 20. So they need about a quarter of the power to maintain half the speed.
- msandford 6y agoFrom the wikipedia article: "Such ships will be used on transatlantic routes and are expected to perform the journey in 12 days, longer than the current average of eight." I 100% get that half speed = 1/4 drag and thus 1/4 power. That makes sense. But I'm not sure how to reconcile half speed with not at least doubling the trip duration. New York to London is 3000 nautical miles. At 10 knots that's 300 hours or 12.5 days. If there are boats doing 20 knots then they should arrive in ~6 days rather than the 8 quoted.
- malandrew 6y agoFor a ship this size, I'm guessing that you need to factor in at least 1/2 day at each end coming and going from port, possibly a full day. It's likely that cruising speed only matters for total number of days minus 2 regardless of trip distance.
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- CuriousNinja 6y agoHow do they plan to load/unload cargo containers from this ship? At most of the worlds ports cargo containers are loaded and unloaded from the above the ship using dock craines, but the wind sails and the (roof?) on this seem prevent that.
- graetzer 6y agoMaybe it is designed for cars as cargo i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll-on/roll-off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll-on/roll-off
- jacurtis 6y agoYeah it seems to be a car freighter. Under Cargo it simply says it is capable of carrying 7,000 cars in the cargo hold. It doesn't appear to be set up for shipping container cargo. It is possible that top-loaded shipping containers don't work well with the sails/airfoil that need to be above the ship.
- foreigner 6y agoI've said it before but I love how these futuristic sail-powered cargo ship designers completely ignore a millenia of sailboat design history. But OK, I'm sure they know better - look at the pretty CG renders!
- consumer451 6y agoGiant steel cargo ships already break every sailboat design pattern, don't they? Airfoil sails "Wingsails" [0] have some proven history and these folks have the advantage of 60 years of CFD software dev! [1] (wow on that last part) Just curious, what makes this design in OP even worse from your point of view? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsail [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_fluid_dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_fluid_dynamics
- buildbot 6y agoIn all honesty wouldn’t we? We might have been refining sails and sailing for a millennium, but only recently did we get steeled hulled container ships with vastly different hull profiles and CFD modeling to tell us what’s actually effective. Biplanes worked great for most of the history of aviation, but we can do better now with math.
- jabl 6y ago> only recently did we get steeled hulled container ships with vastly different hull profiles The hull shape of a steel hulled windjammer is not vastly different from a modern container ship of similar size. Very similar length/beam/draft ratios, both have pretty "boxy" hull shape midships. The big difference is the bulbous bow, which doesn't make much of a difference at the lower speeds a sailing ship spends the vast majority of its time, and of course the stern with the propeller. > Biplanes worked great for most of the history of aviation To nitpick, if we consider the age of flight to start with the 1903 Wright flyer, biplanes were mostly obsolete by the mid-1930'ies. So about 30 years out of a so far total of 118 years.
- renewiltord 6y agoThat's right. They do know better. While the luminaries of the past were great for their time, their techniques are those of laymen compared to us, as ours will be to our grand-children. We take from the past what designs were good then and we throw away what no longer suffices. This is the nature of progress, and why road transport vehicles today share very little in common with those of the preceding millennia. Remember, that it is not just those who say "this is new, therefore good" who are fools but also those who say "this is old, therefore good". Old sailboat designs are old, but no longer competitive. Old communication media (printed text, for instance) are old, but very competitive.
- jansan 6y agoGentle reminder that a good 100 years ago all freight ships were wind powered. I once had the pleasure to talk to someone who served on one of the German Flying P-Liners until the late 50s. His stories were more than amazing. He said that once they failed to pass Cape Horn for 100 consecutive days. On another, more pleasant trip, they had the greatest weather that a sailor can dream of, tailwind and sunshine from start until end. Things have certainly changed a lot, but relying on the weather for shipping is certainly still a challenge.
- _ph_ 6y agoA lot of things have changed since then. Most importantly: we have weather satellites and internet. Even hobby sailors can now get precise weather information for all oceans of the world to plan their routes. Just check windy.com. A 100 years ago, there was no weather information available beyond what you saw when you looked out of the window and the current air pressure. You had to detect weather changes by the change of the air pressure. This makes a huge difference in planning your voyages. On top of that, a modern wing sail is much more efficient than the sails used in the old cargo ships and of course, the modern ship comes with an engine. Bad or no wind will cause more engine use, but not the ship getting stuck in one place.
- jabl 6y ago> the German Flying P-Liners Amazing beauties, shame there's only a few of them left. > He said that once they failed to pass Cape Horn for 100 consecutive days. IIRC those Flying P-Liners were used a lot on the Chilean guano trade. So they had to go round Cape Horn against the prevailing winds on the way out. And with a square rigged ship not being the best for beating against the wind, it sounds believable.