Wireless charging of electric boats
With the spread of electric motors on board boats, the issue of charging solutions is becoming increasingly important. Usually done through a wired connection, battery charging can be long and inconvenient. The British company Perpetual Research Consultancy has therefore decided to explore solutions for improving wireless recharging, with the support of Marine-i, a research cluster based in British Cornwall. "Wireless charging is already used for electric ships whether they are manned, remotely operated or fully autonomous. We believe that this technology could be greatly improved by using very high frequencies (VHF). This would allow orders of magnitude changes in power transfer and lead to greatly reduced charging times," explains Mike Taylor, director of Perpetual Research Consultancy.
A sector identified to create recharging stations for boats
While no finalized commercial product is yet available, researchers have validated three important steps:
- Conduct the experiments with different winding configurations to evaluate their performance characteristics.
- Feasibility study to determine the impedance requirements for the new system
- Identify the procurement costs of key components to estimate the production costs of a commercial scale system
The findings of this research may be of interest to port authorities in the development of electric recreational boats to provide fast charging stations.
