This ferry is intended for very short routes and for maybe one hour of operation

A zero-emissions electric fast ferry is being developed by Fjellstrand shipyard which is designed to operate in Norway on a short route between Stavanger and Hommersåkat.

Fjellstrand has been awarded the €11.7 million contract for this ground breaking concept along with members of the NCE Maritime CleanTech group and Rogaland County Municipality. Keeping a close watch on this development will be the operators of the Thames Clipper service on the River Thames and authorities in Belgium.

Fjellstrand Yard R&D sales manager Edmund Tolo commented, “This ferry is intended for very short routes and for maybe one hour of operation. We know we can build the vessel, we have enough to see that this makes sense, but the big challenge is to build this in an efficient way so that it can be competitive. Keeping the weight down is crucial when it comes to building a high-speed ferry, and one way this vessel will see a reduced weight is that it is all-electric, rather than the more common diesel-electric. If we had made it hybrid there is added weight as there are the systems around the engines and the fuel you carry so if you get rid of that, you free space and weight for batteries on board. If the ferry is travelling really fast, we think there is no room for hybrid systems.”

The battery supplier has not been decided yet, but Wärtsilä, which is delivering the all-electric solutions to the fast ferry, will source the batteries and their weight will play a critical part in the design in terms of weight and volume. Propulsion will be by means of Servogear Ecoflow controllable pitch propellers and construction will be in aluminium, a material that the shipyard has a lot of experience with. Fjellstrand also has experience with electric propulsion with the electric ferry Ampere designed for slow speed operation built by the yard in 2015.

The Maritime CleanTech consortium includes Leirvik, Servogear, Wärtsilä and Hydro Extrusions Norway, all from Norway plus operators Valide and Kolumbus along with Wärtsilä Holland, MBNA Thames Clippers (UK), University of Strathclyde (UK), Fraunhofer IEM (Germany), HSVA (Germany) and Waterwegen & Zeekanal NV (Belgium).

The ferry design will comply with the High Speed Code and Fjellstrand is looking to make the design modular so that it can meet the requirements of a variety of operators.

By Dag Pike