Solar boats power homes

A New Zealand solar boat can power three homes.

Indeed, electric boats not only transport people and goods but can become floating microgrids and virtual power plants, IDTechEx chairman Dr Peter Harrop says in releasing a new report on solar vehicles.

The report, Solar Cars, Buses, Trucks, Trains 2020-2030, explains how energy-positive electric vehicles are leading to dual functions with considerable benefits to society and paybacks.

 Electric boats will enable floating microgrids that can serve islands which have historically been powered by diesel generators, according to a report from researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Reliable, affordable, green electricity has been a big challenge in such cases.

“When some natural disaster occurs in dispersed islands, the electricity networks or generation systems are heavily damaged and residents live without electricity for weeks,” says Jayashri Ravishankar, an author of the report.

“In this case, consumers having this technology can immediately get their power, and the ships sent by the government to distribute food can also supply electricity.

“They may participate in the bidirectional boat-to-grid energy transactions of a virtual power plant in coastal areas”, he says.

The system can maintain the power quality under various load or source uncertainties and fault conditions.

Energy positive solar boats can also bid energy in coastal areas.

This is all part of the technological mega trend of electrically smart materials replacing components-in- a-box as elaborated in the IDTechEx report, Smart Materials for Structural Electronics 2019-2029.

As another example of EVs giving back, the Stella Lux solar car at the Technical University of Eindhoven has long taken four people to work and back, with surplus solar power donated to the grid at the end of the day.

It is planned to commercialise its successor with an app that locates such vehicles so electric car users can find them for some top up charging vehicle-to-vehicle.

Toyota is experimenting with triple junction compound photovoltaics on a car that could do this in a smaller package.

Contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com/Solar for more information.