Environmentally friendly ferries and small islands

Denmark is a small country with thousands of islands of which about 75 is inhabited. For us who lives here bridges and ferries have always been a large part of getting around. As we are good at building infrastructure there have been built more and more bridges. The 18 km bridge and tunnel connection over Great Belt, and the Øresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö in Sweden as the largest examples.

For people above 25 years the Great belt ferries is still a nostalgic memory. The ferries were all named after the royal family, this one was called Queen Ingrid after the mother of the current queen.

But many of the small islands still needs a ferry, and that has collided with another infrastructure effort.

In 1997 it was announced that Samsø, an island with 3500 inhabitants, was to be Denmark's first "renewable energy island". There was no money attached from the government, but through local efforts the inhabitants have succeed in changing their energy supply to electricity made from wind power and biomass. The residents of the island who had been battling with bad economy, unemployment and the young people moving away, rallied around this new project with a new found entusiasm... and they were even making money from it by exporting electricity to the second largest city in Denmark, Århus. Many other little islands have since then decided to follow Samsø and become self-sufficient in as many ways as possible. Young families are moving back to the islands to settle down in this combination of modern technological utopia and classical Danish rural idyll.

Environmental feel good propaganda image from Samsø's tourist website.

There is a problem though that only now is getting solved. If you claim to be a CO2 neutral island you should include everything - also the ferry.

Ferries are hard to electrify with the current battery technology and Samsø has opted for a gas driven ferry. Right now it is using natural gas from Holland, but Samsø is working intensively to establish a biogas plant that can produce biogas for the ferry.

Samsø's gas ferry, Princess Isabella (one more ferry named after a royal person), sailing on LNG (liquefied natural gas). Image from this website

But for the last four years there has been another project - an electrical ferry that should be able to travel the South Funen Island Sea. E-ferry, is a four-year innovation project with the aim of designing, building and testing a 100% electric, medium-sized ferry for passengers and cars, trucks and other cargo. The goal is to promote energy efficient, CO2 neutral and pollution-free waterborne transport on island routes and in coastal waters. An effort that might be usefull in many places in a Europe and abroad. The ferry is built in lightweight materials such as fiberglass, and the hull is shaped to be as energy efficient as possible, but it still needs to have an enormous battery-pack. The world's largest type-approved battery pack for maritime use actually.

The design visualisation. Image from the local municipality website

As with all electrical vehicles the problem is the heavy batteries with relatively low Energy density (compensated with a light build of the hull), and the advantage is the high energy efficiency of the electrical motor. If a better battery type than the ion-lithium used in the e-ferry is invented, electrical propulsion will be used everywhere, but in the current circumstances there has to be made many careful design decisions to make it work on a ship like this.

The ferry Ellen.local municipality website

Now after 4 years development the ferry, Ellen is finally ready to be tested for real. It sailed for the first time 15th of August this year and now there will probably be some time with trial and error design. Today, after being on the sea for a month, it had to be cancelled as they had to work on some inadequacies in the control system. :) The ferry can accommodate 200 passengers and 31 passenger cars or 4 trucks and 8 passenger cars. It will be able to sail 22 nautical miles between each nightly charge in Søby with additional charge each time it docks. The range is 7 times longer than any other fully electric car ferry. Another advantage is that it is very silent and vibration free compared to conventional ferries.

The docking facilities with a larger charger that will supplement the batteries while the ferry unloads.local municipality website

It takes some high voltage to move a ship this size.local municipality website

The island of Ærø, one of the smallest municipalities in Denmark, is supposed to be completely CO2 neutral in 2025. They have received help to the funding from EU, but have financed two thirds themselves and you can see from the material available how proud they are of pioneering these new technologies. Creating CO2 neutral societies have not only been a economic success, but also a cultural revival for these small communities.

This is mainly an art blog, but from time to time I write about other things like environmentally friendly efforts in Denmark (where I live), music, and sometimes It's just the sad wanker rant.