Eco Marine Power’s Aquarius MRE propulsion system, 10 % of bunker savings through renewable energy

Eco Marine Power expects its wind and solar power marine propulsion system to produce at least 10 percent bunker savings, or around 1,000 mt per year for a typical large commercial vessel.
In the past, ships used to travel on wind power only, which makes it look reasonable to think that potential saving due to the use of renewable energy might be increased up to nearly 100 percent (EMP recently published an updated history of wind and solar power for ships that can be read here). Nowadays, it would be practically impossible. This is how Greg Atkinson from the Japan-based company commented the matter: “In theory you could just make the sails very large and potentially the fuel savings would be increased. However our focus is on safety and so we don’t feel rigid sails that are for example 30 or 40 metres high each are practical for RoRo ships, bulk carries, cruise ships, large car/passenger ferries and tankers”.
Nevertheless, according to Atkinson a modern vessel designed specifically with EMP’s technology in mind could more than double that 10 percent bunker saving.
“Theoretically if a large ship was specifically designed to use Aquarius MRE (wind and solar power) and operated on a route that had good wind conditions then I’d estimate the fuel savings to be up to 25 percent,” he said. At 10 percent savings, a large ship using 40 mt per year at sea for 260 days a year would save around 1,040 mt of IFO380 per year. That would also mean CO2 savings of 3,239 mt and SOx savings of around 23 mt per year.
Starting from this month, EMP will co-operate with two major shipping companies in a study to calculate the potential fuel and emission reductions through the use of wind and solar power on some of their ships.