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Wind-assisted propulsion is the practice of decreasing the fuel consumption of a merchant vessel through the use of sails or some other wind capture device. Sails used to be the primary means of propelling ships , but with the advent of the steam engine and the diesel engine , sails came to be used for recreational sailing only.
Early ships used stern or side paddle wheels, which gave way to screw propellers. The first commercial success accrued to Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat (often called Clermont) in US in 1807, followed in Europe by the 45-foot (14 m) Comet of 1812. Steam propulsion progressed considerably over the rest of the 19th century.
A commercial cargo ship, the MS Beluga Skysails, was built, and launched in 2007, with a kite rig supplementing conventional propulsion. [4] A European Union -funded four-year study of wind propulsion, using the MS Beluga Skysails , reported that the ship attained 5% fuel savings overall, which translated into 530 tonnes (530 t; 580 short tons ...
While the design is meant to be usable for different types of ships and even retrofitted to existing vessels, [7] the first vessel from the Oceanbird concept is planned to be a 200 m (660 ft) long roll-on/roll-off ship with a capacity of up to 7,000 cars. Such ships are optimized for transatlantic routes. The first vessel based on the concept ...
According to the Cousteau Society, "when compared to the thrust coefficient of the best sails ever built (Marconi or square types, i.e. ships of the American Cup [sic] or the Japanese wind propulsion system) that of the turbosail is 3.5 to 4 times superior and gives the system a unique advantage for the economical propulsion of ships."
A windmill ship, wind energy conversion system ship or wind energy harvester ship propels itself by use of a wind turbine to drive a propeller. They use wind power [1] through a mechanical or electrical transmission to the propeller. Where transmission is electric, storage batteries may also be used to allow power generated at one time to be ...
SkySails' kite propulsion from upper wind power is a traction use of high altitude wind power. Up to 100 million tons of carbon emissions every year could be saved by widespread use of SkySails technology, according to the International Maritime Organization .
Verena Frank, project manager at Beluga Shipping GmbH, SkySails GmbH's partner, further stated that "the project's core concept was using wind energy as auxiliary propulsion power and using wind as a free of charge energy". [2] This kite is connected to the ship by a cable, and controlled by an automatic pod of actuators to maximize the wind ...