Re:Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of i...
by walrus01 on Sunday September 02, 2018 @02:31AM
(#17895897)
The solar doesn't necessarily have to be ON the ship. If photovoltaics continue their process of price drop in STC $/W ratio, or if at some point very high efficiency low cost nuclear becomes economical, it will be possible to crack hydrogen from sea water at a shore based facility and compress it into tanks. Then use that to power massive fuel cells on ships with fully electric azipod drives.
If your $ per kWh is something ridiculously low like $0.002 you can economically electrolyze h2o to pure hydrogen.
The surface area of the ship, don't care about that. A 20x20km area of the Mojave desert covered in super low cost PV can provide the power needed.
This is the same economy of scale thing as a solar powered car. If you were to theoretically cover every square cm of a Tesla model S in high efficiency PV, and let it sit in the sun all day, it might take a week or more to collect the 95kWh needed to charge it fully. But if the PV is somewhere else on rooftops or otherwise-useless arid land, connected to the grid, you can plug your car in to a 240V 30A socket in your garage and charge it every day.
If your $ per kWh is something ridiculously low like $0.002 you can economically electrolyze h2o to pure hydrogen.
The surface area of the ship, don't care about that. A 20x20km area of the Mojave desert covered in super low cost PV can provide the power needed.
This is the same economy of scale thing as a solar powered car. If you were to theoretically cover every square cm of a Tesla model S in high efficiency PV, and let it sit in the sun all day, it might take a week or more to collect the 95kWh needed to charge it fully. But if the PV is somewhere else on rooftops or otherwise-useless arid land, connected to the grid, you can plug your car in to a 240V 30A socket in your garage and charge it every day.