More information
Description
Marine industry uses wave compensation systems to hold cranes and other devices level against any ship movement in waves. Power is needed when the ship moves down, and power can be recuperated into energy storage when the ship moves up. Usually this energy is not recuperated and is turned into heat instead, or batteries are used for storage, with considerably lower efficiency and lifetime than ultracapacitors. Currently there are no marine certified ultracapacitors in the market as the development cost and certification costs are relatively high compared to market potential, showing weaker risk/reward ratio compared to other ultracapacitor application domains such as automotive, public transport, warehouse logistics, etc.
The objective of the project is to develop and certify ultracapacitor modules suitable for marine environment.
Project outcome is the integration of up to 144 MW worth of wave energy recuperation systems by 2026 by customers such as Kongsberg Marine, Bosch Rexroth, Danfoss, Liebherr, Huisman. Ultracapacitors can recuperate wave energy at 97-98% efficiency saving up to 440 tonnes of CO2 pear year for each megawatt of system power installed. Existing and potential Skeleton customers currently install over 100 MW worth of systems per year.
End customer saves on fuel costs with an IRR of over 100% as a 150 k€ system can offset 220 k€ worth of fuel expenditure per year over the systems 15 year lifetime. At the society level the total CO2 savings are 6000 tons per MW installed, amounting to ~2.5 million tons for systems expected to be installed 2022-2026.
Norwegian partner NX Tech has a dual role of testing (environmental and electronics) and mapping the needs of the Norwegian maritime industry for ultracapacitor applications, including, but not limited to, active wave heave compensation. This incudes specific evaluation through simulations.
Summary of project results
No specific problems or challenges.
The project initiated the development and further certification of the ultracapacitor modules for marine sectoer. As of now, the product is set to be scaled up in production.
Overall, the collaboration between the project partners was fruitful and successful and might lead to future collaboration. The collaboration was important for Skeleton Technologies to access a new market segment, namely ultracapacitors for marine applications, which would have been postponed for much longer without a potential accessible customer, such as NXTech. NXTech was a strong partner in the grant project for establishing customer requirements and constraints specific to active wave heave compensation systems.
Summary of bilateral results
NXTech provided valuable input on customer requirements in the marine sector, which would otherwise have been inaccessible for Skeleton Technologies for WP1. In WP2, specific power profiles which were used as input for the electrical and thermal simulations were provided by NXtech. NXTech provided input for the requirements on the integrators side for thermal, mechanical as well as electronics redesign on module and system level. It was possible to certify a 51V module-based system for marine applications together with the American Bureau of Shipping within the extended project period. With the involvment of the donor partner all activities could be implemented.