M/V Estraden

Last week, the Finnish marine engineering company, Norsepower Oy Ltd, was awarded €2.6M in funding to further its research and development of the Norsepower Rotor Sail Solution technology. The new models of the technology will include the world’s largest ever Flettner rotor. The funding provided jointly by the European Commission, and the Finnish Government’s funding agency for Innovation, Tekes, will be used to optimize the Norsepower Rotor Sail design.

A Flettner rotor is vertical spinning cylinder which acts as a motor powered sail. When wind blows across the rotating cylinder, lift is developed at 90 degrees to the wind flow by what is termed the Magnus effect. Installed on the deck of a ship, Flettner rotors develop thrust similar to conventional sails, except that they can achieve roughly ten times the thrust per surface area as compared to a traditional rig.  Anton Flettner, the inventor of the rotors, sailed across the Atlantic in a two rotor ship in 1926. Flettner’s ship relied entirely on the wind for propulsion.  Current designs are intended to be primarily motor ships with rotor sail auxiliary power to reduce fuel consumption, with targeted savings from 5 – 30%.

For several years, we have followed the renewed interest in Flettner rotors on commercial ships.  In 2010, we posted about Enercon’s E-Ship 1, a Ro/Lo cargo ship with Flettner four rotors, owned by the world’s third-largest wind turbine manufacturer, Germany’s Enercon GmbH.  The E-Ship 1’s  four Flettner rotors are 27 meters tall and 4 meters in diameter and are powered by steam turbine driven by the ship’s exhaust gas boilers run off the main engines’s exhaust. The ship was taken out of service for a year due to engine problems, unrelated to the rotors, which have been judged to be a success with fuel savings of over 16%.

In 2015, Finnish shipping line Bore installed a single rotor, designed and built by the Finnish marine engineering company, Norsepower Oy Ltd. on the ro/ro M/V Estraden.  The installation was deemed to be a success and in January 2016, a second rotor was installed on the ship.  In June, Norsepower Oy Ltd. was awarded the ‘Innovation of the Year’ accolade at the 2016 Electric & Hybrid Marine Awards ceremony, which took place at Electric and Hybrid Marine World Expo in Amsterdam.

With the recent new funding, Norsepower is planning to develop 30 meter rotors, the largest Flettner rotor built to date.