German high-tech ship slashes fuel use on maiden voyage with giant kite

Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters 1 Feb 08;

BERLIN (Reuters) - The world's first commercial ship powered in part by a giant kite is recording fuel savings of between 10 and 15 percent midway into its maiden voyage across the Atlantic, the shipping company told Reuters on Friday.

The 10,000-tonne 'MS Beluga SkySails' left Germany on January 22 for Venezuela and its computer-guided kite system was only fully deployed after it reached the trade winds near the Azores, said Verena Frank, Beluga Shipping's SkySails project manager.

The 10 to 15 percent reduction in bunker consumption, which amounts to $1,000 to $1,500 per day savings, is in line with projections made by the shipping company and SkySails.

The SkySail system, which is also designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, had never before been used on a ship as large.

"Everything has worked out as we had planned," Frank told Reuters. "There's still a lot of testing, adjusting and experimenting taking place. The aim is to have the kite operational for about 50 percent of the entire first journey."

Once the bugs have been ironed out and the crew's expertise with the 500,000-euro ($745,000) high-tech system improves, fuel savings are projected to be up to 20 percent.

Frank said the kite system had never before been tried under such difficult conditions as found in the mid-Atlantic. They were working on improving the coordination of the system.

"We're adjusting, programming, testing, fine-tuning, and working on the stability," wrote Captain Lutz Heldt in a cable to the Beluga home office in Bremen on Friday. Heldt had picked a traditional windjammer route south of the Azores.

The ship is due to arrive in Venezuela on February 5.

The 160-square meter kite, which flies up to 300 meters above the surface to catch more powerful winds, tugs the 132-metre long ship forward and assists the engines.

It is a throwback to an earlier maritime age, harnessing the winds that fell out of favor over a century ago when sailing lost the battle for merchant shipping to modern steam power because it was seen then as primitive and unpredictable.

But skeptics in the shipping industry say it would never be enough to drive the biggest class of oil tankers that are 25 to 50 times larger than the Beluga SkySails.

The world's 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90 percent of traded goods from oil, gas, coal, and grains to electronic goods, emit 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That's about 5 percent of the world's total. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs .reuters.com/environment/

($1=.6727 Euro)