Baltic yard posts more E-boat orders
A spate of new home and foreign orders for electric and solar-powered boats is keeping German Baltic shipyard Ostseestaal busy – and the interest is not expected to decline soon, reports Tom Todd.
The Stralsund yard and its design partner Ampereship have just added an order from operators BSB on the Lake of Constance in southern Germany. BSB said the electro-solar catamaran Artemis would be 33m x 9m and see service from summer 2022. An option for a second ship for delivery 2025 has also been secured.
Ostseestaal Technical Director Thomas Kühmstedt said: “We are entering new dimensions in electric-solar ship business” and described the BSB order as “challenging”.
Ingo Schillinger, the responsible project manager at Ampereship was quoted as saying the newbuilds, for 300 passengers, were bigger and more powerful than any previous all-electric passenger ferryships designed or built by Ampereship and Ostseestaal.
Drawing 1.26m they will have a top speed of17km/h. Each will boast battery capacity of 960 kWh and be driven by two unspecified 75kW rudder propellers.
Schillinger also reported building starting on three electric passenger ships for Swiss operator ZSG on the Lake of Zürich.
ZSG spokeswoman Wiebke Sander told Maritime Journal they were for service from summer 2023 and would be the first fully-electric passenger boats for the ZSG. Equipped with two 55kW Kräutler KRP 75 rudder propellers, the ships are 22.5m x 3.8m with a side height of 2.35m and will carry 61 passengers. Sander said Ostseestaal won the contract because of price, which she put at about SFr 6 million, as well as “experience and optimised hull design”.
No further E-ships are currently planned for ZSG, Sander said, but she noted that the new trio alone would reduce annual CO2 emissions by 100 tons.
Being finished off by Ostseestaal meanwhile for service from August was a 14.65m x 4.5m electro-solar ferry for a local German operator. It will link the German mainland with the island of Usedom on the Polish border to the east.
Solar panels rated 4.3kWp and 80kWh batteries drive a 60kW rudder propeller and provide a service speed of 8km/h with a maximum speed of 14kms/h available if needed.
Ostseestaal was also readying a 21m electro-solar catamaran for delivery to Rostock in July – the first for that port city.
