Tasmanian shipbuilder Incat Tasmania is currently building the world’s largest zero-emissions catamaran ferry which will be fully battery-powered and use a battery electric propulsion system and waterjets from Finnish technology giant Wärtsilä.
Incat Tasmania selected Wärtsilä to provide the battery electric propulsion system and waterjets in a deal announced in August 2023. The lightweight battery-powered catamaran was ordered by South American ferry company Buquebús and will be used to operate between Argentina and Uruguay.
Capable of carrying 2,100 passengers and crew, 225 cars, as well as a duty-free shop of over 2,000 square metres, the Ro-Pax ferry will be delivered to Buquebús some time in 2025. Now we have some details about the battery and propulsion systems that will power it.
Image Credit: Incat Tasmania
Wärtsilä will be responsible for a number of systems to be used by the catamaran, including the power conversion system, smart energy management system, 40MWh battery modules, eight electric motors, and eight waterjets.
Wärtsilä will also provide the DC shore charging system and its own propulsion control system.
And, according to Wärtsilä, “The package of the battery modules and energy storage system will yield 4 times the power of any of the ones on today’s electric or hybrid ships.”
How to power this special, zero-emissions catamaran ferry
The eight main waterjets will be Wärtsilä axial flow WXJ1100 waterjets and have been designed and optimised for a medium speed of 25 knots. Each jet will be powered by a permanent magnet e-motor, also provided by Wärtsilä.
Incat and Wärtsilä have had a longstanding relationship, with a total of 200 waterjets delivered to Incat Shipyard. Thanks to Wärtsilä waterjets, Incat’s catamarans have become faster and bigger, as well as more efficient.
Importantly, the waterjets to be used in the new battery-powered catamaran were not larger than before, and are in fact smaller, tens of tonnes lighter than on previous Incat installations.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.
This describes the type of srategy we might expect Fortescue’s 1.8MWh battery electric haul trucks and locomotives. Redundancy and fail safe built in for something like uninteruptable service.
Uninterruptible, like ‘future proof’ or ‘very unique ‘?
Sorry I was trying to be brief.
Like N+1 design. This where N being minimum number needed to keep working plus 1 (or whatever number is needed) of failures predicted to still avoid interuptions.
Thanks for that.
And ‘fail safe’?
Like a dam, or lunar lander?
Norway makes ferries for us. We make them for Argentina.
Makes sense.
Right up there with ‘running out of domestic gas’
‘importing iron ore’
‘playing AFL in America ‘
And others similarly ridiculous.
remember when we once had Federal industry policy? 😉
Is that when we had a FIRB?
We don’t have a shipyard in the country big enough to build ships the size of the new Spirit of Tasmania ferries, so they had to come from elsewhere. Nor are the smaller ferries (like this one) suitable for the Bass Strait run.
On the other hand, Incat has decades of experience building aluminium catamarans of the size needed for shorter runs in quieter waters.
Thanks Charles. Excellent response.
Its an interesting quirk don’t you think, that our affluent island never bothered to establish an industry around big ocean going ships? We have the raw material and had the smelters. I guess we just lacked the will to become an engineering powerhouse.
Aluminium boats.
It’s a real shame that bauxite is so plentiful. This toxic rubbish will be around forever.
Aluminium is not toxic. It’s an excellent material for building ships and is actually produced in Tasmania from hydro (renewable energy). It’s also much easier to work with for a relatively small engineering company.
You’re right.
Tobacco, bauxite and uranium in their natural environments are fairly benign too.
Could you please recommend your shipbuilders to the New Zealand government, they need lots n lots of help from those that know what they’re doing.
Oops.
NZ navy trying to control their recent embarrassing collision with an obstacle they were “mapping.”
I am more surprised we are building this thing. Manufacturing in Australia. How quant.
Our biggest manufacturing industry now is military hardware. That’s why we don’t hear much about it.
But HYDROGEN for heavy transport and shipping!!!!
*vein pops in head*
H2 battery hybrid could work. Battery as ballast, anything above that weight ,H2 Fuel cell as range extender.
To my understanding H2 is always going to be a last resort, mostly due to price but plenty of other reasons.
“Michael Liebreich’s Hydrogen Ladder” is probably a good go too for this
Most people that mention hydrogen just have some unfounded hate of batteries yet use them everyday without much thought or appreciation. 🙄
give me your business case for this comment, and the reason why it could be a better alternative?
Silly question. It’ll need a huge range right?
Not for normal use but, to get it from Tasmania to Argentina… how? I guess it has diesel generators and can have temporary fuel storage in the cargo area?
Might be towed
Another possibility would be delivery by “float on float off” vessels commonly used to transport yachts. This type of vessel has large ballast tanks to allow it to be partially submerged, then the cargo is floated into position and then tanks are emptied to lift the cargo.
It would get delivered by being carried on another ship.
I wonder what the range is, and whether it could one day become the new-new Spirit of Tasmania, instead of the new LPG one.
SoT should at least be hybrid. Going for LNG is not exact cutting edge. No plans for auxiliary sails either, despite continuous cross winds along the bass strait.
Whoops, yeah, LNG. It would have been nice if they’d thought about better options seven years ago, but there’s still a general (mis)perception that natural gas is “clean and green” 😬
The term “fossil gas ” is more accurate than ” natural gas” without the marketing.
Yes.
Greenwashing 101.
Good start. High density 1GWh battery (doubling as ballast along the ship’s keel) with H2FC generators as range extender, and augmented by kite sails would push range out well above 1,000nm, and allow for zero emissions shipping in the Majority of use cases.
We are building electric ferries for 3rd world countries while our own fleet is still overwhelmingly diesel.
With South America rapidly transitioning to EVs thanks to Chinese imports, soon those “3rd World countries” will look much more futuristic than supposedly “first world countries”.
Uruguay is not a third-world country.
In fact Uruguay generates a higher proportion of its electricity from solar and wind than we do. They are the second highest in the world on this metric, after Denmark.
So what does that make us?
Following the leaders? As opposed to trying to ignore all this stuff like North America is trying to do.
Cowardly minnows?
Pearlfish?
Probably more than just “look”.
Uruguay probably fell for China’s policy of ‘loaning’ the technology. Leaving you in debt for 100 years and if you default they own your arse.
Not new. Stll plenty of suckers out there. China just learning from the lessons supplied by numerous others. And with eye watering financial clout.
50 years to be 0 carbon neutral
Really dumb headline! What will power a battery electric car? Anyway, good news. The idea that large vehicles can’t be powered by batteries is being blown to smithereens. If Tesla Semis are around 800kwh that would mean this ship uses about 50 Semi’s worth of batteries. In that context, it doesn’t seem so onerous. Those batteries should last for decades with little to no maintenance compared to the older diesels etc. Great progress. Next up….Battery powered air ships.
I thought that too!
I think you mean “batteries should last for decades with little to no maintenance compared to fuel tanks…”
The pump drive motors will have a much longer time before overhaul (TBO) than the present day reciprocating motors though.
Personally, this is the ideal use case for liquid ammonia. Much quicker refuelling turnaround & longer range than batteries, and much safer than gaseous hydrogen.
Battery powered air ships?
Don’t hold your breath Bill.
Massively expensive desalination plants are evidence that humans are bad at catching water that falls from the sky. But good at sending the subsequent brine out to kill the krill.