Two solar-electric ferries delivered to Italy

The two passenger ferries will operate on Lake Iseo (Lago d’Iseo), near the northern Italian town of Bergamo, to transport up to 140 passengers.

The 26m x 6.6m vessels each have two electric drives, with an output of 100kW, supplied by two battery banks that have a total capacity of around 750kWh.

“These are charged by shorepower and by solar modules during the journey,” says Ampereship. “Seventy-five per cent of the roof area of the solar deck is covered with PV modules. Ampereship is integrating its own propulsion, automation and energy management systems into the newbuilds.

“The special thing about the Iseo project is that Ampereship delivered the ships to the site in sections and assembled them on site. This meant that there were no major transport problems and no local shipyard was required. It took around four weeks to assemble each ferry on the shores of Lake Iseo before they were able to set off on test runs and are now already in operation.”

The vessels were built at the Ostseestaal site in Stralsund ‘under the technical management’ of Ampereship.

The two vessels are not the first of a kind by Ampereship in the Alpine region: three identical solar-electric passenger ships have already been delivered to Lake Zurich, the company says, and they are highly unlikely to be the last.

“The fleet of passenger ships in Europe is very outdated and numerous ships will need to be replaced in the coming years,” said Ampereship general manager Dirk Zademack. “It therefore makes sense to choose emission-free alternatives whose construction process is also extremely efficient.”