Luxurious Solar Yacht: Meet E-Yacht FIRST EDITION

[@Raees-Divitiae]

Subbed! Just stumbled across you from GTOplan 's channel. I hope all is well, mate! Keep up the good work. Keep pushing forward!

[@lifeon8320]

Nice!!! Make more videos and share with us. Thanks

[@kylem324]

Cool build. Based on your learnings having built and used the boat, how well do you think a kite sail system would integrate with the hybrid system?

[@calledout4437]

Very cool! I realize this is a pretty general question depending on the boat of course. But about how much is it to buy a catamaran and convert it to electric? I was looking at something like Silent Yachts and the price tag is crazy expensive. Got to thinking perhaps do exactly what you did! Any idea on the cost and potential savings by just converting a boat to electric?

[@joemarine2]

You say you would love for more of these to come out buy I haven't seen much info about how this all came together. You might get that info out there. I am interested in building me one that could possibly preform a crossing.

[@firsteditionthesolarelectr5416]

Hi Joseph. Great question and input. When you say crossing do you mean Atlantic Crossing? Contact me through First Edition’s Facebook page and we can discuss further.

[@brettscott7614]

How does wind affect your boat with the custom solar roof?

[@barryholiday8998]

few questions: 1. Was the yacht purchased with the factory diesel engines? 2. Thoughts on keeping one of the diesel engines and installing an electric motor in the other engine bay? 3. How many AH of batteries do you have? 4. How many knots are you traveling for the 25 mile range? Thank you and really enjoy your videos.

[@firsteditionthesolarelectr5416]

Yacht was purchased with factory diesel engines. They would not sell me one without engines. I had to remove them and sell them on eBay. I could have left one engine if I was interested in higher speeds but I am satisfied with the speed at which the electric motors allow. I used to be a sailor and I am used to traveling at 7 kn or less. I have 90 kWh onboard. I can cruise at 6 1/2 kn using 25 kW per hour. That gives me a range of about 20 miles at that speed. Of course if I slow down a bit I can go much further. As an example, I only use 3 kW per hour to move the boat at 3 kn. With 90 kW of battery storage, I could run at 3 kn for 30 hours for a range of 90 miles. As a sidenote, I generate about 25 kW from solar per day. At 3 kn, that’s another 8 hours or 8 miles of cruising. The reality is if I’m going longer than 20 miles, I run the generator. Great questions.

[@barryholiday8998]

@@firsteditionthesolarelectr5416 thank you for the quick and thorough reply. Did Nova Luxe by chance work on your boat to complete the conversion? Regarding my question about keeping one Diesel engine and installing an electric motor I was thinking that would throw off the distribution on the boat considering the disparity in weight. Look forward to more videos.

[@JohnSmith-zo6ir]

@@barryholiday8998 I wouldike to retain both engines because less than 10 knots is pretty useless especially if you have waves, wind and or tides of 3-4 knots running against you. I do however like the idea of solar running the onboard hotel facilities at anchor to have the silent nature experience without running a noisy generator. Solar and battery storage simply have not advanced far enough in marine applications (fire risk of lithium batteries on board is a huge issue) to have anything but a hybrid. At sea, just as on land, you need reliable redundancy and base load power. Being caught out at sea without reliable power is dangerous and that is the reality. Aquila should look at the hull designs to incorporate a hybrid system, but I know a lot of boat manufacturers are concerned about on board fires, because electric battery fires spread fast as seen with cars and then of course there is the insurance and litigation costs when it all goes wrong.

[@8654ZuluFoxtrot]

I'm not sure why these yacht manufacturers are not taking full advantage of solar panels, the typical placement of these is simply sub-par at best. To maximize the usage, placing them all over the roof of the fly bridge and then slapping them on a hard platform that simply sticks out from the fly is kind of a waste. Why not simply put fold out solar on top of the fly bridge roof? There is already a few camper trailer builders who are doing this and it works great. You can more than double your solar panels and not take up any extra space. The panels simply fold out, motorized, and create extra shade around the yacht and double your panels at the same time.

[@MarthaPulgarin509]

Show me the vessel not you