Design for automated power transfer vessel

Japanese company PowerX plans to design and build an automated power transfer vessel using huge batteries. The vessel will transfer electricity from offshore wind farms to shore stored in the batteries. The aim is to enable energy transmission between any two ports in the world. It is planned to have the vessel in operation by 2025.

Using batteries to transfer electricity to shore aims to be cheaper, more reliable and have impact on the environment compared to subsea power cables. The first design of the vessel, called the Power ARK series, is a 100-TEU trimaran ship specially designed for transferring renewable energy in Japan’s coastal waters.

When completed, the ship will carry 100 grid batteries, or 200 MWh of power. The vessel can travel up to 300km when running only on electricity and will be able to provide long-distance, intercontinental clean power transmission when it is powered by both electricity and sustainable biodiesel fuel.

PowerX also intends to build a giga-scale battery assembly facility in Japan to mass-produce batteries for the next generation of energy transfer ships. The factory’s annual production capacity will reach 1 GWh by 2024 and will eventually reach 5 GWh by 2028.