Powering the electric yacht of the future

Removing fossil fuels from yachts is a huge undertaking. When this is attempted, there are various challenges. One of the biggest, of course, is generating energy, but hot on its tails is another one: storage.

And that’s where the batteries come in.

To function at the desired level, sailing yacht Zero requires five&nbps;megawatt-hours of battery power, the equivalent of 100 medium-sized electric cars. But it gets tougher. This system needs to be safe, lightweight, and entirely invisible.

Finding nothing on the market capable of meeting these extreme demands, Marc van der Raaij and Bram Bonsen at Invenion accepted the challenge. They’d design a revolutionary marine battery system from scratch.

The first step was addressing safety concerns. The battery needed to eliminate the need for fallible external protection systems.

“We had to make it safe by design,” Van der Raaij says.

The team did this by engineering an innovative, highly efficient heat shield that acts as an intelligent thermal barrier. In extreme conditions, this shield functions like a "fire chief," limiting any thermal incident to a plume of smoke instead of a catastrophic fire.

There were other breakthroughs too. The system is compact and modular, granting naval architects ultimate freedom. Gone are the days of batteries being big, bulky rectangles, now they can adapt to the demands of designers.

Sustainability is also a core aspect of Invenion’s design. Defying standard manufacturing practices, the team avoided gluing parts into inseparable blocks. Instead, components are crafted from single materials designed for easy replacement, upgrading, and recycling.

Finally, we need to discuss the efficiency gains of Invenion’s battery.

While comparable battery management systems drain 2 % to 3 % of their capacity daily just staying online, the new design reduces that consumption to 2 % to 3 % per week. This is a sevenfold improvement.

Through intense collaboration and a willingness to push boundaries, the team took what was a bold idea and made it very, very real.

Changing the maritime industry doesn’t happen overnight, but Invenion’s battery design is a leap forward for green maritime technology.