Alternative Energy - Skysails… Using Windpower

The highly anticipated maiden voyage of the beluga (skysails)  cargo ship was completed on the 13 March 2008.

The Beluga set sail from Bremhaven in Germany on the 22 January 2008.  The first destination was Venezuela, followed by the United States and then Norway, covering a distance of 11.952 nautical miles.

It was the testing phase for the new wind-powered propulsion system - Skysails. A 160sq. meter computer navigated, towing kite operated from a telescopic mast at the front of the ship, which on favourable conditions can provide more than 20% power relief from the ships main engine.

That's approx. 6000 horsepower!

The Skysails propulsion system is saving between 10% - 35% of fuel economy or  2.5 tonnes per operating day. This translates to approximately £500.00 per day.

The company have plans to produce kites of up to 600sq. meters on the large p-series carriers   providing twice the ammount of energy which would result in approximatelly £1000.00 fuel savings per operating day. Part of these savings will be given directly to the crew as an incentive.

The skysails propulsion system has a dramatic reduction in CO2 emmissions since the energy is naturally harnessed from the wind rather than chemichally produced from the fuel. Since the ship is saving 10% - 35% per operating day there is a coresponding ammount of reduced CO2 emmisions. Which is great!. The shipping industry is turning greener!.

After all it's been said that the founder and managing director of skysails Mr. Stephan Wrage is an "eco-freak".

This is great news and we look forward to hearing news of the 2nd generation (larger) skysails when ready.

Click on the following link to view more interesting images of Skysails in action:  http://www.skysails.info/index.php?id=70&L=1

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Tests

I've been 'playing around' with hydrogen fuel cells for some months now, whenever time's permitted. These tests have mostly been 'my baby' as Emmanuel has been fully occupied with his courier business.

I've done a lot of researching - one of the biggest reasons being that HHO is highly flammable - so potentially dangerous. As I have my 12 year old daughter usually in the car with me, I wanted to make sure that I knew how this gas behaves, and exactly what the potential dangers are.

Just briefly now, I will say what I have done:

We'd bought the Water4Gas ebook originally but as we did not know anything about water fuel and hydrogen fuel cells, decided to buy the kit from America. In my excitement, I bought the wrong kit! I'd ordered the kit that is for making the energised water to drink for health reasons - not the one for installing in the car. (I'm scientifically minded but not very mechanically minded.) As it wasn't working I lost interest for some time until I spoke with a gentleman who has been making, using and selling kits for the past 4 years in the uk - way before the water fuel ebooks came out.

I visited him, saw them installed in all of his cars and bought 2 for my car. Seeing what he had done with his cars was quite an experience but I will leave that for another day.

I installed them, tried them out ...but no satisfactory results! To be honest, I was feeling that the whole process didn't work at this time; however, I made the following video to know if I had gone wrong installing them. (I knew that the installation was safe but wanted to make sure that all small details were exactly correct for expected increase in mpg.)

I was told the mistake was that I had wired the cells in relay, rather than in parallel. This meant that the cells were only receiving 6 volts each, instead of the necessary 12 volts. By this time I was beginning to think that the system wasn't going to work, was very busy at that time, so did not do any further tests - although I had adjusted the wiring as instructed.

...But several days after altering the electrical wiring I started to watch the petrol gauge needle, because it seemed to be going down much slower than usual. I only do about 10 to 15 miles a day. Over the next few days I kept my eye on it and reached the stage when I was absolutely positive that either I was doing appreciably more miles/gallon or... my petrol gauge had broken! I then made this next video:

The car that I have installed the 2 fuel cells in is an old car and for some time, (way before hydrogen fuel cell installation!) oil has been getting into the carburettor. After making this video I resolved to do some more tests. I also checked the oil and by mistake, filled it up to maximum - which I had not been doing for many months to avoid the oil flooding into the carburettor...

The long and short of it is that I have messed up the 'continuity' of my tests and will have to start from square one again. Frustrating! I will add any future testing and/or results to the blog, as they occur.

If you are interested in following what happens, there is a page for subscribing to a hydrogen fuel cell test results email subscription. If you subscribe you'll only receive an email if there is something further to report.