Photo credit: PlanetSolar
Friday, May 4th 2012 will mark an important day in alternative energy transportation history as the MS Tûranor PlanetSolar, a 100% solar-powered catamaran, will complete the first ever trip around the world using only the power of the sun. The 101-foot vessel returns to port in Monaco after spending 586 days circumnavigating the globe, traveling 37,000 miles during the journey which began on back on September 27, 2010. Following a route close to the Equator, the Tûranor has crossed the Atlantic ocean, gone thru the Panama Canal, across the Pacific ocean and Indian ocean, through the Suez Canal, and back across the Mediterranean Sea.
The deck of the Tûranor is covered with over 5,300 square feet of photovoltaic panels (there are 38,000 silicon solar cells in total), all of which charge six blocks of lithium-ion batteries and generate 93.5 kW of energy for the boat’s two electric motors. This power provides the carbon-fiber boat with 127 horsepower to push it along at a top speed of 15 knots (17 mph) in the open ocean. Costing $24 million to construct and millions more to operate, it requires an on-board crew of just four sailors but could accomodate forty comfortably.
“We will never see container ships depending 100% on the sun as the surface area of the solar panels would be too great. But with our prototype, we proved that this powerful technology has a commercial future,” said the founder of the project Raphaël Domjan in talking to the French newspaper Tribune de Genève. He got the name “Tûranor” from the J.R.R Tolkien mythology, which means “power of the sun” in the series.
[via Scientific American and The Local]