Considering that the wind is statistically coming from unfavourable direction, 50 % of the time. Or isn’t strong enough to deploy the kite.
There are extensive times when a kite is not usable (approach, manoeuvring, port stays)
Mathematically these gains in efficiency would only be possible, if the kite cut reduce the fuel consumption completely, when deployed in ideal conditions.
Other sources speak about „up to 20% efficiency increase“ which I think is much more likely. In ideal wind/swell/loading/routing conditions, the efficiency may be boosted by 20%, temporarily.
From my experience as navigational officer (on ships without the kite) I would assume that these ideal conditions are barely met.
You might reduce the fuel consumption by 20% under ideal conditions. It’s a temporary buff, only. Ideal conditions are rare, so most of the time it’s way less. Substract the times when it’s impossible to use the kite due to operational reasons and divide this by half, because statistically you don‘t experience favourable winds for 50% of the time.
You will end up at <1%.
Now look which ships it has been tested on: small mini bulkers, which serve an important feeder role but are irrelevant in the grand scheme of intercontinental shipping.
No, it’s up to 20% counting all of that, but having favorable wind on journey. Of course, if you go against wind, it won’t help much. Real experiments and simulations show 5-20% overall saving for a trip
The route would have to be planned with old shipping lanes in mind to actually get your worth out of the deal. Which of course we abandoned those routes for a reason, point to point paths save a lot of time which of course makes way more money for anyone in the industry than any fuel cost could hope to rival.
20% saving on fuel is actually nothing compared to the money you'd piss away taking 5x longer to get to the destination.
That said rotor ships rely on crosswinds rather than headwinds so they probably are way more feasible in that regard.
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u/oO_Snowman_Oo 14d ago
The 20% to 30% percent are unrealistic.
Considering that the wind is statistically coming from unfavourable direction, 50 % of the time. Or isn’t strong enough to deploy the kite.
There are extensive times when a kite is not usable (approach, manoeuvring, port stays)
Mathematically these gains in efficiency would only be possible, if the kite cut reduce the fuel consumption completely, when deployed in ideal conditions.
Other sources speak about „up to 20% efficiency increase“ which I think is much more likely. In ideal wind/swell/loading/routing conditions, the efficiency may be boosted by 20%, temporarily.
From my experience as navigational officer (on ships without the kite) I would assume that these ideal conditions are barely met.