Norway Leads An Electric Ferry Revolution

The world of large commercial boat electrification is being led by Norway electric ferries, which were first introduced to the country in 2014 when one of the country’s major ferry companies, Norled, announced the world’s first fully electric battery powered car ferry. Now electric ferries are becoming the latest must-have for one of the world’s most maritime-travel intense nations.

If you’ve ever seen a map of Norway, you’ll know that ferries are a big deal. It’s coastline has thousands of fjord inlets, and if you take into account all of them, it has 25,148 km of coastline – the 8th longest in the world. Just behind Australia (25,760) and well ahead of The U.S. (19,924) and China (14,500).

Named ‘Ampere’ after the unit of electric current, it went into service in June of 2015 and in its first two years sailed a distance equivalent to 4 times around the Equator, racking it up 6 km at a time by shuttling back and forth between two little ports called Lavik and Oppedal.

The boat stops for only 10 minutes at each end, and using a charger from Corvus Energy it gets an electric top up in those 10 minutes and a full re-charge overnight. It makes 34 crossings a day. With no fossil fuel expenses. No wonder Norled’s competitors want one.

You can read the full article on Plugboats - "Norway Leads An Electric Ferry Revolution"

Source: Plugboats

Region: Europe

Country: Norway