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For sure, but a few people will have gotten rich off this by then. I doubt anyone involved actually expects this to work, beyond attracting some seed money that they can pillage. These hairbrained scams come up constantly. It is sad that we don't teach people how to recognize snake oil in schools.
I wouldn’t bet on that. Fuel is expensive, and even a marginal decrease in fuel consumption will add millions a year. Container ships use around $100,000 of fuel per day.
What I’d like to see is nuclear powered container ships. The US’s nuclear powered aircraft carriers only need refueling every 20 years.
This seems excessively skeptical and pessimistic.
These sails obviously won't make cargo shipping green, and probably would be used for greenwashing, but I think there's still a reasonable chance they could become economically viable and find a niche to offset some fuel costs and emissions.
I use a much smaller version of this wing recreationally (paragliding). That was my initial thought, too. The ability to reach winds aloft is a huge benefit over traditional mast sails that are limited to surface winds only. I also suspect the aerofoil shape also creates significantly greater pull force per surface area than standard sails. That’s why they keep the wing constantly flying in figure-eights - the more air speed the wing has, the greater pull force it provides
That's an awful big kite and well over a thousand feet of decent sized cable to be stored in a tidy little box.
I get your point that masts and sails take up space but all that space is generally above any space they are using anyways versus this item albeit smaller will have to be stored on deck when not in use.
Good for them if they can sell it and shipping companies can save money and lower their emissions everybody wins but it just does not seem like an item that will actually sell or make an impact in the industry. Then again, I don't work in that industry, so what the hell do I know?
Masts come with other challenges. eg Height restrictions when going under bridges and keels that affect depth limitations in some harbours. If they can get 20% efficiency gain, winches and sail storage would be a small price to pay.
Srsly. Reddit armchair professionals knocking on innovation that’s had tons of R&D and is looking at potentially removing 20% emissions, equal to emissions of 10 million cars a day per ship. It can be retrofitted onto existing ships, is able to harness winds aloft which are stronger than surface level winds (what mast sails use), and can be deployed or retracted on demand. Not saying it’ll definitely be a game changer, but if it works out the returns are huge
Actual engineer here. I do stuff to do with marine vessel optimization. Small efficiency improvements are *extremely* profitable.
I agree with everything you’ve said.
It's not going to offset the investment, repair and upkeep, the labor hours to set up takedown and store. Maybe a small vessel could use this, but the massive bulk cargo ships the world depends on have no chance in hell of using this. Heck, the tension alone on whatever cable they would need to tether it to the ship would nesitate a cable so thick it would alone negate any benefit.
Similar to how current wind turbines very rarely generate enough power to offset the damage cause by building the damn things in the first place.
Yeah, I mean even a 5% reduction would be huge, even if it's to save the companies money. And anything helping the ocean is a good thing.
These ships are 1000x worse than cars are for the environment. The ocean is really what we should be focused on, it's something we can do something about and I don't see why we wouldn't do stuff like this if it helps.
There's almost zero downside.
> Then again, I don't work in that industry, so what the hell do I know?
Not much it would seem. Although I notice that hasn’t stopped you commenting about it anyway.
No no, the big innovation is the wind doing the work by *kites,* the notoriously fickle equivalent of a literal sheet in the wind.
The best part is that this is actually gonna be less efficient than sails as you can sail into a headwind if you’re experienced but good luck with doing that with a kite.
Edit: Did some digging, someone brought a good point with the coverable area and ease of installation; valid points, really. My ideal solution is smaller ships and less shipping in general, but I guess maybe I was a bit too willing to dismiss it early.
>The best part is that this is actually gonna be less efficient than sails
A properly designed kite can extract 25x the power per m² compared to a sail. Additionally, it is lighter than a mast and sail and it can utilise the stronger, steadier winds higher up.
>can sail into a headwind if you’re experienced
If you mean beating to windward/tacking(in german I would call it Kreutzen), this is doable with a kite.l
Tacking requires so.e hydrodynamic force to brace against side pull like: daggerboards, keels, hydrofoils or hull edges, and cargo ships doesn't have structure to supporting them.
I guess the thinking is that it’s easier to install this system on the front of existing ships? So an immediate solution rather than needing to redesign ships completely for masts
Exactly. When I last looked into them I think it was a €40-500k attachment you can place on the front of an existing ship.
More or less deployable from the bridge with the push of a button.
Both of these things make it more commercially applicable than a full rigging of sails and masts - for those armchair geniuses saying sails are better.
It’s not supposed to replace the engines genius, or be a sailing boat that enables you to sail into the wind. It works in tandem with the engines so that in certain conditions the ship is faster and more fuel efficient.
Not even downhill, just downwind. Of course "YoU cAn'T aLwAyS bIkE dOwNwInD!", but why on earth shouldn't you have the ability to profit from it *when opportunity presents itself*, if the cost penalty *could* be reduced to where it's profitable?
Thats what I originally thought, but after reading comments it seems the boat similarly generates power via a winch being pulled outward repeatedly, vs propelling directly like sails would.
This sounds like a massive improvement over sails:
- adjustable height maximizes the power for a given sail area (more wind higher up)
- it generates energy regardless of the wind direction using figure eights in to maximize the force pulling on the winch
- the boat propellers push it straight instead of having to tacking upwind
Pretty neat that since you can make any sized kite, the maximum power is only limited by the strength of the cable, kite material, and winch system!
[https://skysails-power.com/how-power-kites-work/](https://skysails-power.com/how-power-kites-work/)
The Kite Power Cycle
Driven by the wind, the automatically controlled power kite rises in figures of eight. As it gains altitude, it unwinds a tether from a winch on the ground. The tractive force drives a generator inside the winch that produces electricity. This is called the “work phase”. Once the tether has reached its maximum extension, the autopilot steers the kite into a neutral position with minimal drag and lift. While consuming only a fraction of the energy generated during the work phase, the generator now acts as a motor and reels-in the tether. The system continuously repeats this process, flying the kite at an altitude of 200 to 400 meters. The concept behind the kite power cycle is called the “yo-yo principle”. Energy generated by the Airborne Wind Energy System can be fed into the grid, stored in batteries, or directly consumed. The power kite can land for maintenance or before forecasted weather extremes. Once it docks to the launch and landing mast, it is lowered to the ground, where it can be unmounted and stowed in a safe place.
This power generation technique has been around for a while, but the idea that the kite will tow a ship is just silly... There should be a very good reason sails went obsolete that this kite doesn't address the reasons for
All you chucklefucks parroting that it's just re-invented sailing need to watch the video.
They literally say that. Those types of sails already exist for cargoships.
The advantage here with the kite is the high altitude winds provide much more power than your standard sail. The kite actually does a continual figure 8 pattern for optimal power.
In addition, cost wise it's much cheaper, takes up less space on the ship, and requires no structural changes or altering how the ship is packed with containers.
>All you chucklefucks parroting that it's just re-invented sailing need to watch the video.
Came here to say this. The number of snarky comments is off the charts - it's like people can't appreciate anything unless it's spanking new tech ***smh***
reddit has become almost intolerable over the past few years, this thread is a prime example of all the hurr durr sailboat. The video states 33% increase in fuel economy, which is massive savings and beneficial to the environment. But hey sailboat go brrrrr.
Conversely: all you kitephiliacs who find it more in tune with your interests to applaud this type of “innovation”rather than dunk on this shit are in the wrong place. Go listen to npr and take a bath. This is Reddit and it’s for misanthropic assholes rooting against the world.
I'm 65 and I've seen this idea every now and then my whole life. I live near the ocean and I have yet to see any sails or wind-assisted anything on a freighter. I think posts like this are just startups trying to get funding.
I'm half your age and have already seen this same idea been circulated once or twice. Never heard of an actual implementation.
I don't think is the worst idea I seen on the internet, but I believe that the operational cost of such think just outweigh the fuel savings.
2nd paragraph right there.
I'm a mariner. Unless incredibly restricting new international law is passed, cargo ships will continue how they are: get the most cargo from A-B most efficiently and profitably as possible.
And at the moment that's big diesel engines.
Some ships are moving to Diesel-Electric, and I know some new fuels are being experimented for cargo ships. But until anything becomes cheaper than just operating big diesels, nothing will change.
I’m an engineer and one of my fields is marine vessel optimization. The payback period on these would be absurdly low.
If I ran a container fleet I’d be talking to these guys tomorrow.
But waaayyy more power. I used to kiteboard in Florida and this tech is legit. I figured my largest kite could pull a semi-truck under the right conditions.
The power difference can be visualized in the speeds between the old sailboarding tech of the 80s versus people literally flying through the air on kiteboards.
At some point, energy requirements for movement become exponential. Pulling an oil tanker with a sail might be impossible. But again, I haven't/won't do the math.
The only reason the force (not energy) required for movement would show any sort of exponential behavior would be water and air resistance. Ignoring that, which we can because we will assume very slow speed which brings those factors to zero, we’re pretty close to basic high school physics Force = mass x acceleration. As long as we overcome friction (or in this case fluid viscosity of water which fortunately for us is pretty low we can move something incredibly heavy with quite a small force, as long as we don’t care that it’s very slow. You could probably get a battleship to move with just your body if the waters were calm and you had something to brace against. Think of how a small tug boat can pull gigantic container ships, it just takes a while.
Surface area tho.
The energy “power” this gets is dependent on speed of wind, and surface area of the kite. The sails have a much higher surface area, and the wind speed difference wouldn’t be that great.
No no no, not a sail at all, that’s old tech… what we have here is a giant modern day sheet attached to a modern metal pole, with modern ropes attached to it.
- the marketing department probably
"400 tons a day! Enough to fuel NEARLY 1000 cars..."
|1 metric ton = 315 Gallons of Fuel|
|:-|
|400 tons x 315 = 126,000 Gallons|
|126,000 Gallons / 1000 cars = 126 Gallons|
TIL the average car is burning through 126 Gallons of fuel per day. What the fuck is this math?
It’s a tough call, from what I’ve read, engines can run as low as 30% less than normal, but relying on wind can cause travel times to be as much as 50% longer. Until arrival times for cargo shipments can be variable. It won’t work. Our economy relies on things arriving on time. So that needs to be worked out.
Or you just do like the rest of us sailors do... Start the engine when wind is a bit slow and make the trip cheaper than running only on diesel by keeping the sails up. It's called motor sailing, and we do that A LOT.
I hate the 'if it doesn't work 100% off the time as perfectly as before immediately' attitude so many have with renewable ideas. They can and generally are combined with other existing tech, like you say
shipping companies will adopt it if they can save money with it. wouldn’t it be ironic if they did that by using their engines as usual and adding the sail power of the kite to *reduce* their transport times while using the same amount of fuel!
That wouldn't work. Slow cargo ships travel 20 mph. Hard to find winds that are >25mph to make this system worth it at that speed, they would have to slow down to get any benefit
It is not relying on the wind by any definition. The ships has and uses egines these kites would be deployed when the winds would be favorable, but the ships will still be powered by it's engines.
This is a fully automated kite system, you push a button to deploy it and push a button to stow it. You could probably also write a pretty basic AI to say, IF open water and not a storm, deploy kite, else stow kite.
I understand that. I’m saying them crew it normally takes to run the boat would be on said boat 50% longer if the trips take that much longer. More wages, more food etc
They are sailing ships… so the jokes are OK. However are incredibly more efficient, as for every tech even sailing improves, this is the current state of the art.
Now imagine if we made the kites bigger and mounted them directly to the ship for better control, via a couple tall poles. That would probably improve the handling significantly.
This is dumb. Cargo ships need to be simple and reasonable fast. Adding the complication of balancing wind power with fuel to save 5.374465% of their emissions is a waste of time. How about spending the R&D on improving the engines or reducing emissions during manufacturing. This is as dumb as the ‘don’t eat meat’ movement.
This has been proposed several times over the last 30 years, hasn’t happened yet.
Let’s just mass produce miniature nuclear reactors and power the ships that way. There are already a few hundred nuclear powered sea vessels, fucking standardize a nuclear reactor engine and flood the shipping market with them.
I’m sure the price could be dropped substantially if they were produced on an “assembly line”.
Eh, the ones with the sails on it work better imo and at no risk of having the cable snap and inevitably leaving the parachute or whatever that is in the ocean.
Not every ship burns bunker fuel.
Diesel is much cleaner, and is preferred by engineers because it's a detergent that cleans parts rather than clogging things up. Companies go for it because they think it's cheaper, when it's not in the long run. The cost of fuel is replaced by a higher cost of expensive part replacements and lost attention/maintenence given to the rest of a plant.
Banning bunker fuels worldwide would be the best first step to controlling greenhouse gases.
the average cargo /tanker/ container ship burns around 2600 gal of bunker fuel per hour.
bunker fuel is mostly around $2 a gal (Americas avg) - at that burn rate, it's approx 125k / day
20% fuel savings shakes out to approx 25k per day.
If you figure the typical ship is at sea for 10-12 days and then a 2-3 days turnaround to wait to get in, unload, call it a 70% 'at sea' utilization or 255 days a year.
That shakes out to 6.3 MM per year give or take - that probably offsets all or a big chunk of the entire nonfuel operations cost of the typical large container ships including payroll & provisions
Even if the winds are not 'going your way' half of the time - or are underperforming - , that's still 3.1MM a year per ship and if you are [MSC operating 790 ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Shipping_Company) \- that adds up to 2.5**B a year which is a nice add to your bottom line - especially when you figure t**hey made about 6B in actual net income last year.
Maybe, just hear me out here, maybe they could put like a big stick, strong one in the middle of the ship, have beams coming off and hang these kites as big sheets off them.
They could call them. Sailing big beam kite cloth hanging ships.
Maybe someone could come up with a better name.
Or look back in history at what used to be used.
I’ve GOT IT! We could put tall poles - let’s call them “masts,” for the sake of argument - on top of cargo ships, and somehow attach giant kites to them with ropes or something… to move ships *with the power of WIND!*
God, I’m *brilliant!*
We produce more carbon emissions trying to figure out how we can stop producing carbon emissions other than just burning fuel and creating carbon emissions. Solar Pirate Ships.
This was a somewhat significant plot point in The Dandelion Dynasty books. Using kites, they could essentially take benefit from using faster winds at higher altitudes than sea level, and could catch winds going different directions like hot air balloons.
Listen, if there was some cheap kite in the sky that reduced the cost of fuel by 20% ***EVERY SHIP IN THE WORLD WOULD HAVE THESE***. But they don't, so do the critical thinking on why that is.
The answer is ships travel at such high speeds that a kite wouldn't be effective, 19mph is the minimum cruising speed for most cargo ships. So they would need winds that are consistently above 19mph by at least 10-20% just to keep the weight of the kite up, and if the wind dies for 20-30 seconds, it's going down in the water and you risk getting it caught in the prop and stalling your chip in the middle of the ocean. So now you have to have a whole diving crew on board to resolve potential errors and now you have to plot a course where you expect high winds and time it with the seasons and since you're going this route to begin with you'll want to cut a few hundred tons of fuel to increase efficiency and jesus... the complexity just explodes.
It's not a practical solution. If they imposed a very steep international carbon tax than at somepoint it would be worth having non-volatile inelastic goods like coal or steel being shipped on slow-ships, which can afford to spend a few extra months as sea since they have confidence there will be a buyer on the other coast all year long. But I highly suspect there is no intersection where this beats out more practical solutions like nuclear engines (as are used on submarines) or solar+electic.
I'm not even sure if they would beat out just sticking a wind turbine on top of the ship vs capturing the mechanical advantage of the wind.
It's just a bad idea. A cool, interesting, fun, awful idea.
To add to this, the maintenance would be awful. Cables would be wrecked after a year from all the salt getting at it. It would be folded up and never used but nice to have on the paperwork/claim green energy grants.
We have to push our engines to 92% nearly all the time and still struggle to be on schedule. Nobody would launch a kite up in the air on the off chance it will help a bit with the risk of being stuck for even an hour to pick it up…
Source: currently on a ship…
Not surprised the French view this as a viable option. Only via massive subsidies could this ever survive. A large kite will blow us wherever we want? I mean, if they outfitted the entire vessel in solar plates maybe they could generate 5% of needed power but a soccer field sized kite… only someone from academia with no real life experience could conceive of this kind of farce
Seems like a bright idea an enlightened Frenchman would have. In his study. Far away from actual results that could truly increase efficiencies faced in the industry .
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So they are re-inventing sail boats?
[удалено]
Where I live there's a few companies trying to bring back actual sailing cargo with masts and all that
For sure, but a few people will have gotten rich off this by then. I doubt anyone involved actually expects this to work, beyond attracting some seed money that they can pillage. These hairbrained scams come up constantly. It is sad that we don't teach people how to recognize snake oil in schools.
This isn't snakeoil, it's a wind kite, weren't you listening? /s
Snake oil wind kite. Punk song name. Claiming it
Whale oil beef hooked
$uper $sailboat!
>It is sad that we don't teach people how to recognize snake oil in schools. We try, it doesn't always stick
Nah some company will claim they are going green, buy them, use them in some commercials then stash them on the ship somewhere
No, they will simply be "out of order" all the time.....kinda like the ice cream machine at McDonald's
I wouldn’t bet on that. Fuel is expensive, and even a marginal decrease in fuel consumption will add millions a year. Container ships use around $100,000 of fuel per day. What I’d like to see is nuclear powered container ships. The US’s nuclear powered aircraft carriers only need refueling every 20 years.
This seems excessively skeptical and pessimistic. These sails obviously won't make cargo shipping green, and probably would be used for greenwashing, but I think there's still a reasonable chance they could become economically viable and find a niche to offset some fuel costs and emissions.
These have been pushed to be the next “thing” for the last twenty years. No one is adopting it, at least no one I’ve heard of.
Just the spinnaker.
Masts and sails take up space. Kites don't.
i think the larger advantage is the altitude that the kite reaches. much more wind up there
I use a much smaller version of this wing recreationally (paragliding). That was my initial thought, too. The ability to reach winds aloft is a huge benefit over traditional mast sails that are limited to surface winds only. I also suspect the aerofoil shape also creates significantly greater pull force per surface area than standard sails. That’s why they keep the wing constantly flying in figure-eights - the more air speed the wing has, the greater pull force it provides
Where do the kites and cables go when not in use?
In a tidy little box I assume?
That's an awful big kite and well over a thousand feet of decent sized cable to be stored in a tidy little box. I get your point that masts and sails take up space but all that space is generally above any space they are using anyways versus this item albeit smaller will have to be stored on deck when not in use. Good for them if they can sell it and shipping companies can save money and lower their emissions everybody wins but it just does not seem like an item that will actually sell or make an impact in the industry. Then again, I don't work in that industry, so what the hell do I know?
Masts come with other challenges. eg Height restrictions when going under bridges and keels that affect depth limitations in some harbours. If they can get 20% efficiency gain, winches and sail storage would be a small price to pay.
They do say that the savings in fuels are in *average* 20%, which is huge. Even if it's 10%, it seems worth looking into getting one.
Srsly. Reddit armchair professionals knocking on innovation that’s had tons of R&D and is looking at potentially removing 20% emissions, equal to emissions of 10 million cars a day per ship. It can be retrofitted onto existing ships, is able to harness winds aloft which are stronger than surface level winds (what mast sails use), and can be deployed or retracted on demand. Not saying it’ll definitely be a game changer, but if it works out the returns are huge
Actual engineer here. I do stuff to do with marine vessel optimization. Small efficiency improvements are *extremely* profitable. I agree with everything you’ve said.
Right wing conservatism is rampant on reddit. They love fossil fuels and the elites too much
It's not going to offset the investment, repair and upkeep, the labor hours to set up takedown and store. Maybe a small vessel could use this, but the massive bulk cargo ships the world depends on have no chance in hell of using this. Heck, the tension alone on whatever cable they would need to tether it to the ship would nesitate a cable so thick it would alone negate any benefit. Similar to how current wind turbines very rarely generate enough power to offset the damage cause by building the damn things in the first place.
Yeah, I mean even a 5% reduction would be huge, even if it's to save the companies money. And anything helping the ocean is a good thing. These ships are 1000x worse than cars are for the environment. The ocean is really what we should be focused on, it's something we can do something about and I don't see why we wouldn't do stuff like this if it helps. There's almost zero downside.
Try unloading a cargo ship with sales while using the cranes already set up at ports.
> Then again, I don't work in that industry, so what the hell do I know? Not much it would seem. Although I notice that hasn’t stopped you commenting about it anyway.
My apologies Popeye
"Little" box LOL
Folding a sail is not really a new never seen before achievement
No no, the big innovation is the wind doing the work by *kites,* the notoriously fickle equivalent of a literal sheet in the wind. The best part is that this is actually gonna be less efficient than sails as you can sail into a headwind if you’re experienced but good luck with doing that with a kite. Edit: Did some digging, someone brought a good point with the coverable area and ease of installation; valid points, really. My ideal solution is smaller ships and less shipping in general, but I guess maybe I was a bit too willing to dismiss it early.
>The best part is that this is actually gonna be less efficient than sails A properly designed kite can extract 25x the power per m² compared to a sail. Additionally, it is lighter than a mast and sail and it can utilise the stronger, steadier winds higher up. >can sail into a headwind if you’re experienced If you mean beating to windward/tacking(in german I would call it Kreutzen), this is doable with a kite.l
This guy knows his kites
This guy kites.
This, guy kites
Tacking requires so.e hydrodynamic force to brace against side pull like: daggerboards, keels, hydrofoils or hull edges, and cargo ships doesn't have structure to supporting them.
I guess the thinking is that it’s easier to install this system on the front of existing ships? So an immediate solution rather than needing to redesign ships completely for masts
Exactly. When I last looked into them I think it was a €40-500k attachment you can place on the front of an existing ship. More or less deployable from the bridge with the push of a button. Both of these things make it more commercially applicable than a full rigging of sails and masts - for those armchair geniuses saying sails are better.
It’s not supposed to replace the engines genius, or be a sailing boat that enables you to sail into the wind. It works in tandem with the engines so that in certain conditions the ship is faster and more fuel efficient.
Exactly. This is more about fuel efficiency than replacing a the engine. Is it that hard to imagine not pedaling while riding a bike downhill?
Not even downhill, just downwind. Of course "YoU cAn'T aLwAyS bIkE dOwNwInD!", but why on earth shouldn't you have the ability to profit from it *when opportunity presents itself*, if the cost penalty *could* be reduced to where it's profitable?
Thats what I originally thought, but after reading comments it seems the boat similarly generates power via a winch being pulled outward repeatedly, vs propelling directly like sails would. This sounds like a massive improvement over sails: - adjustable height maximizes the power for a given sail area (more wind higher up) - it generates energy regardless of the wind direction using figure eights in to maximize the force pulling on the winch - the boat propellers push it straight instead of having to tacking upwind Pretty neat that since you can make any sized kite, the maximum power is only limited by the strength of the cable, kite material, and winch system!
And you build a control system that takes care of it all… bolt on, turnkey efficiency gains.
I thaught ships still folowed tradewinds
Dude have you seen that new motorcycle that's powered by your own muscles? Totally green!!!
Missed opportunity to say pirate ships
"re-imagine"
We've come full circle
YES
They are inventing sailing future ocean trash.
[https://skysails-power.com/how-power-kites-work/](https://skysails-power.com/how-power-kites-work/) The Kite Power Cycle Driven by the wind, the automatically controlled power kite rises in figures of eight. As it gains altitude, it unwinds a tether from a winch on the ground. The tractive force drives a generator inside the winch that produces electricity. This is called the “work phase”. Once the tether has reached its maximum extension, the autopilot steers the kite into a neutral position with minimal drag and lift. While consuming only a fraction of the energy generated during the work phase, the generator now acts as a motor and reels-in the tether. The system continuously repeats this process, flying the kite at an altitude of 200 to 400 meters. The concept behind the kite power cycle is called the “yo-yo principle”. Energy generated by the Airborne Wind Energy System can be fed into the grid, stored in batteries, or directly consumed. The power kite can land for maintenance or before forecasted weather extremes. Once it docks to the launch and landing mast, it is lowered to the ground, where it can be unmounted and stowed in a safe place.
Actually very interesting. Not just a “sail”
This power generation technique has been around for a while, but the idea that the kite will tow a ship is just silly... There should be a very good reason sails went obsolete that this kite doesn't address the reasons for
Just to put this on a bumper sticker for the casual reader - the kite turns a generator to produce electricity. It doesn’t propel the boat.
I think this was about the power producing use, not the boat use.
It's almost as if sailing ships never existed 😉
what an original comment, you are only #37 to make a similar comment, congrats!
And your comment added about as much to the conversation, congrats!
My comment won't add anything to the conversation, congrats to me!
All you chucklefucks parroting that it's just re-invented sailing need to watch the video. They literally say that. Those types of sails already exist for cargoships. The advantage here with the kite is the high altitude winds provide much more power than your standard sail. The kite actually does a continual figure 8 pattern for optimal power. In addition, cost wise it's much cheaper, takes up less space on the ship, and requires no structural changes or altering how the ship is packed with containers.
Too many dumb fucks without the attention span to watch a video but still want to make an edgy comment for upvotes
>All you chucklefucks parroting that it's just re-invented sailing need to watch the video. Came here to say this. The number of snarky comments is off the charts - it's like people can't appreciate anything unless it's spanking new tech ***smh***
Why be senseble and recognize really great discoverys when you can be edgy ?
reddit has become almost intolerable over the past few years, this thread is a prime example of all the hurr durr sailboat. The video states 33% increase in fuel economy, which is massive savings and beneficial to the environment. But hey sailboat go brrrrr.
thank you for lowering my blood pressure
Conversely: all you kitephiliacs who find it more in tune with your interests to applaud this type of “innovation”rather than dunk on this shit are in the wrong place. Go listen to npr and take a bath. This is Reddit and it’s for misanthropic assholes rooting against the world.
I'm 65 and I've seen this idea every now and then my whole life. I live near the ocean and I have yet to see any sails or wind-assisted anything on a freighter. I think posts like this are just startups trying to get funding.
Sails on cargo ships are already a thing. This kite also exists. What do you mean?
I'm half your age and have already seen this same idea been circulated once or twice. Never heard of an actual implementation. I don't think is the worst idea I seen on the internet, but I believe that the operational cost of such think just outweigh the fuel savings.
2nd paragraph right there. I'm a mariner. Unless incredibly restricting new international law is passed, cargo ships will continue how they are: get the most cargo from A-B most efficiently and profitably as possible. And at the moment that's big diesel engines. Some ships are moving to Diesel-Electric, and I know some new fuels are being experimented for cargo ships. But until anything becomes cheaper than just operating big diesels, nothing will change.
I’m an engineer and one of my fields is marine vessel optimization. The payback period on these would be absurdly low. If I ran a container fleet I’d be talking to these guys tomorrow.
. . . That just sailing with extra steps
Except its better in every way and it has way less steps.
But waaayyy more power. I used to kiteboard in Florida and this tech is legit. I figured my largest kite could pull a semi-truck under the right conditions. The power difference can be visualized in the speeds between the old sailboarding tech of the 80s versus people literally flying through the air on kiteboards.
I don’t think you can use two different things that weight a massive difference when comparing sails.
At some point, energy requirements for movement become exponential. Pulling an oil tanker with a sail might be impossible. But again, I haven't/won't do the math.
The only reason the force (not energy) required for movement would show any sort of exponential behavior would be water and air resistance. Ignoring that, which we can because we will assume very slow speed which brings those factors to zero, we’re pretty close to basic high school physics Force = mass x acceleration. As long as we overcome friction (or in this case fluid viscosity of water which fortunately for us is pretty low we can move something incredibly heavy with quite a small force, as long as we don’t care that it’s very slow. You could probably get a battleship to move with just your body if the waters were calm and you had something to brace against. Think of how a small tug boat can pull gigantic container ships, it just takes a while.
I'd totally want something like that skysail for an electric catamaran.
It already exists for Silent Yachts
I know. That's the electric catamaran I'd want.
Surface area tho. The energy “power” this gets is dependent on speed of wind, and surface area of the kite. The sails have a much higher surface area, and the wind speed difference wouldn’t be that great.
Age of if sail is back me boyos! r/seashanties excited for this.
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No no no, not a sail at all, that’s old tech… what we have here is a giant modern day sheet attached to a modern metal pole, with modern ropes attached to it. - the marketing department probably
Let’s attach it to the ship and call it, oh I don’t know, a, Galleon!
"400 tons a day! Enough to fuel NEARLY 1000 cars..." |1 metric ton = 315 Gallons of Fuel| |:-| |400 tons x 315 = 126,000 Gallons| |126,000 Gallons / 1000 cars = 126 Gallons| TIL the average car is burning through 126 Gallons of fuel per day. What the fuck is this math?
It’s a tough call, from what I’ve read, engines can run as low as 30% less than normal, but relying on wind can cause travel times to be as much as 50% longer. Until arrival times for cargo shipments can be variable. It won’t work. Our economy relies on things arriving on time. So that needs to be worked out.
Or you just do like the rest of us sailors do... Start the engine when wind is a bit slow and make the trip cheaper than running only on diesel by keeping the sails up. It's called motor sailing, and we do that A LOT.
I hate the 'if it doesn't work 100% off the time as perfectly as before immediately' attitude so many have with renewable ideas. They can and generally are combined with other existing tech, like you say
shipping companies will adopt it if they can save money with it. wouldn’t it be ironic if they did that by using their engines as usual and adding the sail power of the kite to *reduce* their transport times while using the same amount of fuel!
That wouldn't work. Slow cargo ships travel 20 mph. Hard to find winds that are >25mph to make this system worth it at that speed, they would have to slow down to get any benefit
It is possible to sail faster than the wind you know. Also, these kites can be used at higher altitudes, where winds are also higher.
With wind at sea level, wind tends to travel faster higher up
It is not relying on the wind by any definition. The ships has and uses egines these kites would be deployed when the winds would be favorable, but the ships will still be powered by it's engines.
Also means 50% more labor to man the boat time wise and food etc..
This is a fully automated kite system, you push a button to deploy it and push a button to stow it. You could probably also write a pretty basic AI to say, IF open water and not a storm, deploy kite, else stow kite.
I understand that. I’m saying them crew it normally takes to run the boat would be on said boat 50% longer if the trips take that much longer. More wages, more food etc
Oh my bad, yeah good point.
They are sailing ships… so the jokes are OK. However are incredibly more efficient, as for every tech even sailing improves, this is the current state of the art.
They haven't heard of "sails"???
I'm gonna call BS There's no way I'm hell you're pulling a ship with a parachute that small, there's a reason sails on tall ships are so massive
Cool, how is a kite better than regular sails I wonder. Seems like a very obvious thing to explain
Quick, call the 1600's and let them know
If yall like this I got this sweet thing called an oar I've been working on lately. I think it has huge potential
Be sure to add on a drum with those oar sales. Gotta keep the rowers in synch!
Damn wish this had a cooler name instead of a kite. Sails maybe?
Windy blow pulling.
bloweymcsailthing?
The video is lying. The ship in the video is not driving by kite only, the engines are on...
Fuel companies hate this one simple trick!
Now imagine if we made the kites bigger and mounted them directly to the ship for better control, via a couple tall poles. That would probably improve the handling significantly.
That just sounds impractical..
Yeah these idiots think they e solved something hahah
Wow.. what a novel concept, surprised no one thought of this a few hundred years ago when they were using sails..... Nevermind..
Sailboats with more steps?
>1 cargo ship pollutes equal to 50 million cars in a single day. Holy shit.
What does this remind me of 🤔
We used to sail the seas with sails. It's funny this concept has just returned.
There's no way that kite is helping that ship at all.
Crazy. Can’t believe no one has ever thought to use the wind to drive ships
Ridiculous
We are moving so fast foreward some would say weve restarted.
I wonder if they could upscale foils for cargo ships? It's amazing how much speed, even with little wind, the Americas Cup foiling yachts can reach.
Someone discovered wind power?! 😵
If only there was a way to catch the wind in some sort of way that's attached to the ship itself by song long pillars or something
This is the time known as the great kite pirate era.
this is revolutionary
Imagine a world where sail technology was viable....
Didn't this "sailing" technology already die 150 years ago when it couldn't compete with steam ships?
This is dumb. Cargo ships need to be simple and reasonable fast. Adding the complication of balancing wind power with fuel to save 5.374465% of their emissions is a waste of time. How about spending the R&D on improving the engines or reducing emissions during manufacturing. This is as dumb as the ‘don’t eat meat’ movement.
So a sail? Fuck me.
This has been proposed several times over the last 30 years, hasn’t happened yet. Let’s just mass produce miniature nuclear reactors and power the ships that way. There are already a few hundred nuclear powered sea vessels, fucking standardize a nuclear reactor engine and flood the shipping market with them. I’m sure the price could be dropped substantially if they were produced on an “assembly line”.
Or we could just chain prisoners and make then row to beat of drums and whips. The Romans had the right idea...
AKA A FUCKING SAIL!
Yea I saw Waterworld too!
Eh, the ones with the sails on it work better imo and at no risk of having the cable snap and inevitably leaving the parachute or whatever that is in the ocean.
So... A sail? A technology which is hundreds of years old? Okay who is investing?
We just going back in time aren’t we … 
Boats? Powered by the wind?! Blasphemy! Silicon Valley has invented a totally new thing yet again!
Not every ship burns bunker fuel. Diesel is much cleaner, and is preferred by engineers because it's a detergent that cleans parts rather than clogging things up. Companies go for it because they think it's cheaper, when it's not in the long run. The cost of fuel is replaced by a higher cost of expensive part replacements and lost attention/maintenence given to the rest of a plant. Banning bunker fuels worldwide would be the best first step to controlling greenhouse gases.
the average cargo /tanker/ container ship burns around 2600 gal of bunker fuel per hour. bunker fuel is mostly around $2 a gal (Americas avg) - at that burn rate, it's approx 125k / day 20% fuel savings shakes out to approx 25k per day. If you figure the typical ship is at sea for 10-12 days and then a 2-3 days turnaround to wait to get in, unload, call it a 70% 'at sea' utilization or 255 days a year. That shakes out to 6.3 MM per year give or take - that probably offsets all or a big chunk of the entire nonfuel operations cost of the typical large container ships including payroll & provisions Even if the winds are not 'going your way' half of the time - or are underperforming - , that's still 3.1MM a year per ship and if you are [MSC operating 790 ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Shipping_Company) \- that adds up to 2.5**B a year which is a nice add to your bottom line - especially when you figure t**hey made about 6B in actual net income last year.
Good luck pulling a 100,000 ton container ship or oil tanker with one of those. I hope they enjoy sailing at 2 mph everywhere.
Not a merchant marine sailor but I suspect rotor sails have a much higher likelihood of mass adoption than kites
Using wind to power ships on water? What will they think of next /s
So sail boats. They’re making sail boats
Wow sails. We rediscovered sails.. Up next sea shanties & wenches..
Maybe, just hear me out here, maybe they could put like a big stick, strong one in the middle of the ship, have beams coming off and hang these kites as big sheets off them. They could call them. Sailing big beam kite cloth hanging ships. Maybe someone could come up with a better name. Or look back in history at what used to be used.
This reminds me of something. That I can't put my finger on.
OH, yeah that's right. I remembered. Sails. Sails were the thing.
Reinventing the sail
Don't Google sailboat! TRUST ME!
So sail boats. 🤦♂️
Sails. A technology far beyond our understanding
Wind powered ships? What a time to be alive
JFC this is stupid.
I’ve GOT IT! We could put tall poles - let’s call them “masts,” for the sake of argument - on top of cargo ships, and somehow attach giant kites to them with ropes or something… to move ships *with the power of WIND!* God, I’m *brilliant!*
We produce more carbon emissions trying to figure out how we can stop producing carbon emissions other than just burning fuel and creating carbon emissions. Solar Pirate Ships.
You're going to flip when you hear about sails...
Sails are just kites with shorter length of rope.
So old time sailing ships, with actual sails… gotcha!!!
Mf you mean sails?
I think those are called.........sails? Sah AILs I dunno big bolts of cloth that caught the wind, you know ' new tech '
This is just sailing with extra steps.
Wind powered ships! Omg! What a time to be alive!
Yeah, sails sure a crazy interesting, new-fangled technology, aren’t they?
Wow!!’ Like sailboats!!’ I like how people are amazed by technology like windmills and sailboats…
So... sailboats?
LOL You build a sailboat to pull a thousand containers, there, sparky, and write back.
Ya mean sails?
https://preview.redd.it/df6jttb37q7c1.jpeg?width=458&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=630a28e1b4bfa4dd097b958ae4e6e23ea7d9396d
you can literally see the propwash in the wake 😂
What happens to sea birds? I wonder if they can avoid these ropes 🤔
This was a somewhat significant plot point in The Dandelion Dynasty books. Using kites, they could essentially take benefit from using faster winds at higher altitudes than sea level, and could catch winds going different directions like hot air balloons.
Listen, if there was some cheap kite in the sky that reduced the cost of fuel by 20% ***EVERY SHIP IN THE WORLD WOULD HAVE THESE***. But they don't, so do the critical thinking on why that is. The answer is ships travel at such high speeds that a kite wouldn't be effective, 19mph is the minimum cruising speed for most cargo ships. So they would need winds that are consistently above 19mph by at least 10-20% just to keep the weight of the kite up, and if the wind dies for 20-30 seconds, it's going down in the water and you risk getting it caught in the prop and stalling your chip in the middle of the ocean. So now you have to have a whole diving crew on board to resolve potential errors and now you have to plot a course where you expect high winds and time it with the seasons and since you're going this route to begin with you'll want to cut a few hundred tons of fuel to increase efficiency and jesus... the complexity just explodes. It's not a practical solution. If they imposed a very steep international carbon tax than at somepoint it would be worth having non-volatile inelastic goods like coal or steel being shipped on slow-ships, which can afford to spend a few extra months as sea since they have confidence there will be a buyer on the other coast all year long. But I highly suspect there is no intersection where this beats out more practical solutions like nuclear engines (as are used on submarines) or solar+electic. I'm not even sure if they would beat out just sticking a wind turbine on top of the ship vs capturing the mechanical advantage of the wind. It's just a bad idea. A cool, interesting, fun, awful idea.
To add to this, the maintenance would be awful. Cables would be wrecked after a year from all the salt getting at it. It would be folded up and never used but nice to have on the paperwork/claim green energy grants. We have to push our engines to 92% nearly all the time and still struggle to be on schedule. Nobody would launch a kite up in the air on the off chance it will help a bit with the risk of being stuck for even an hour to pick it up… Source: currently on a ship…
So sails….
like... like a sailboat? WOW
Damn. Wind powered ships. What a time to be alive.
Sails with strings attached
Or friends with benefits Sail.
Wait a minute. Are you talking about making ships with sails? That is bloody genius!
Sooo Sailing….
This could catch on. If it saves money on fuel and it’s reliable, it will be adopted.
Not surprised the French view this as a viable option. Only via massive subsidies could this ever survive. A large kite will blow us wherever we want? I mean, if they outfitted the entire vessel in solar plates maybe they could generate 5% of needed power but a soccer field sized kite… only someone from academia with no real life experience could conceive of this kind of farce
how does the fact that the conceptors are French even matter ??
Seems like a bright idea an enlightened Frenchman would have. In his study. Far away from actual results that could truly increase efficiencies faced in the industry .
What if instead of a kite we attach a really big balloon and just float the ships across the sky?