Eco-prototype joins HADAG fleet

Elbharmonie is the first in a series of Type 2020 boats described as particularly eco-friendly, quiet in operation and with low emission levels.

Costing a reported €3.3 million it is HADAG’s most modern vessel and was designed and built in about ten months by local shipyard Pella Sietas in Neuenfelde. It is similar in appearance to previous Type 2000 “Bügeleisen” boats, the first of which began service with HADAG in 1997. They are so named because they resemble floating flat irons. However, the resemblance ends there because the newbuild is technically much more sophisticated than its sisters.

Like its 13 predecessors, the new prototype is 29.5m long and draws 1.75m but it is about half a metre wider at 8.4m and HADAG says that despite the increased beam, an efficient new sub-surface hull design still means lower surface and wavemaking drag. The wider hull also offers much more space and makes the new boat more accessible and movement-friendly for disabled people. Passenger capacity is much bigger and Elbharmonie carries up to 400 passengers – 88 on the upper deck and 154 in the lower passenger saloon. That is 60% more than on its Bügeleisen predecessors. The wider boat has also meant reshaped seating and stowage areas.

Elbharmonie has diesel-electric propulsion comprising two Scania DI 13 engines and what makers Siemens describe as a flexible, compact, fuel-saving, long-life EcoProp system. It also has Pella-Sietas optimised drive for its two fixed propellers supplied by Schaffran. It has LED lighting and draws its heating needs from the engines and gets its electricity on-shore. Its two waste gas treatment plants described as “comprehensive” comprise Fischer soot particle filters and SCR catalytic converters. They “effectively reduce waste gas emissions … and make it possible to keep the boat’s ecological impact as low as possible”, said HADAG. Managing Director Gabriele Müller-Remer declared that with its diesel-electric drive and Ecoprop system the Elbharmonie was “doubly ecological and as ecological and economical as it is possible to be”.

On the nautical and navigational front, the prototype’s radar/AIS equipment consists of MTH 7217 RT, RADARpilot IN 720̊ LE and AIS EM-TRAK A100 systems.

HADAG has operated ferry services in Hamburg port since 1888 and is today responsible for all port ferry services in co-operation with the city’s transport authority HVV. It says it currently operates a fleet of 25 boats of several different types on nine ferry routes. They cover 330,000 sea miles a year on a 30 kms network on Hamburg’s River Elbe and in the port’s many harbours and carry more than eight million passengers a year.

By Tom Todd