A UK company is working hard to develop a new type of charging system for electric vessels which it claims could have a big impact on marine operations.
The Director of Perpetual Research Consultancy, Dr Mike Taylor, explains: “Wireless charging is already employed for electric vessels, whether they are crewed, remotely operated or fully autonomous. We believe that this technology could be greatly improved by devising a way of using VHF frequencies for wireless charging. This would deliver order of magnitude increases in power transfer, and lead to vastly reduced charging times.”
Working with technology experts at University of Plymouth, Perpetual Research Consultancy devised a three-stage development process.
“The first step was to carry out experiments on different wire coil configurations and thoroughly evaluate their performance characteristics. Next was a feasibility study to determine the requirements of impedance matching networks for the new system. The final stage identified procurement costs for the key components, so we could estimate the production of cost of the system when manufactured at scale.”
By Jake Frith
