

Ask HN: wind powered, power generating ships - stuntgoat

Would a very small ship with a very large mast dragging a water turbine generator create enough power to be useful?
======
jws
I doubt it. Compared to a fixed tower wind turbine you have hull drag losses,
water turbine losses, and the problem of where to put the power since you
won't have cables to shore.

Some cruising sailors do use systems like this to generate their own power
when under way.

~~~
yannis
Agreed. There was a link here at HN sometimes to an article about a ship with
wind turbines going to see and returning with stored hydrogen as an Energy
source which I thought was a good idea, if the economics eventually make it
viable.

------
Someone
'useful' is subjective. That mast would not have to be 'very large' to power
one's GPS system, and having that certainly could be useful. At even lower
power, a tiny impeller that measures boat speed could be very useful.

If you are aiming for large amounts of power, I would expect it to be more
efficient to replace part of the sailing by a wind turbine, and to get rid of
that water turbine.

------
david927
Take a look at this; I submitted it a couple days ago and found it very
interesting:

[http://thepowergeneration.blogspot.com/2009/09/hydrogen-
chal...](http://thepowergeneration.blogspot.com/2009/09/hydrogen-
challenger.html)

If you had other ships carrying away the generated hydrogen, it seems like a
brilliant idea.

------
mbrubeck
My friend Craig, an engineer for an oceanography company, has been working on
very similar ideas for a while. Here are two of his proposals:

<http://longshotcity.com/2008/11/17/flymill/>

<http://www.paratow.com/>

