Here is our report on the first day of the Electric and Hybrid Marine World Expo in Amsterdam 23 June. The event covered a wide range of technologies and systems, the main emphasis being the main value market -that for seagoing surface boats: Hybrid versions in are favoured: they are gaining market share fastest.

 

Pollution legislation is particularly demanding off the USA and in the English Channel and favourite technology is becoming liquified natural gas for gas turbines in large ships and piston engines in small ships both driving electric motors. In small craft that increasingly means parallel hybrid with a lithium-ion storage battery but sometimes supercapacitors. Exhibitor Furukawa of Japan is trying to break into marine applications with the intermediate product between battery and supercapacitor in this case based on a lead battery electrode plus carbon electrode. However exhibitor JS Radio pushed its lithium-ion capacitors as the way forward with hynrids. Torqeedo had superb new products on display including a 50kW outboard motor.

Similar healthy contention occurred with everything else. We see some using new components suc as SiC in inverters: some not. Some made asynchronous AC induction motors for boats but others promoted prrmanent magnet synchronous motors for similar applications.

 

See the IDTechEx reports

Electric Motors for Hybrid and Pure Electric Vehicles 2015-2025: Land, Water, Air, Supercapacitor Materials 2015-2025: Formulations, Forecasts, Roadmap, Companies, Power Electronics for Electric Vehicles 2015-2025,Energy Harvesting: Off-grid Renewable Power for Devices, Vehicles, Structures 2015-2025 and Analysis of over 140 Lithium-based Rechargeable Battery Manufacturers: Chemistry, Strategy, Success.