It’s windy out, there on the world oceans. No inconvenient mountains or trees diminish the wind’s power out on the big blue. But most of a boats life is at anchor, moored up, where the wind still blows. But unlike sailors battling flapping headsails in the middle of the night, the wind that sweeps over a boat can be used and stored, even whilst the boat is unattended. In TRYBRID’s shift to hydrogen gas, as a core energy storage medium, all of a sudden the boat design has a big appetite for energy to make hydrogen via electrolysis. So we have added wind turbines, to be deployed at anchor. Lots of them. A small wind turbine, that won’t slice an arm off, can still generate 500watts.
Add 20 such wind turbines, and we are talking a serious addition to the boats 20kw photovoltaic arrays, with another 10kw of potential power, for a relatively low cost, compared with solar.
Some have joked that a boat covered in spinning drums or fan blades, won’t end up covered in seagull shit. There is an advantage to a boat seeking free energy primarily from the sun, to gain a big boost, if it can also generate power at night, when the wind will still blow, after the sun has long gone. Sorry seagulls.
Solar cell and wind turbine technology is well advanced, and ready to use off the shelf, but to date, the planet has been slow to introduce serious marine applications that have been designed from day dot, to be harvesters of solar and wind. TRYBRID changes this paradigm. And with a good reason: to pump, clean, toxic -free hydrogen gas into compressed canisters. Energy to go.
There is no huge line up of mechanised transport that can boast the ability to not only use renewable energy, but to also produce it onboard. In essence TRYBRID is potentially the first closed loop, trans ocean transport ever introduced…a means of transport that can both make and store serious amounts of its own fuel . Unusual.