I mean it’s a press release. Those don’t cost anything.
The only application of this that seems half feasible is maybe some kind of post-disaster recovery where for whatever reason you’ve ruled out using a generator.
The only application of this that seems half feasible is maybe some kind of post-disaster recovery where for whatever reason you’ve ruled out using a generator.
Even the larger version doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you'd be looking at keeping the ship in port for quite a while unless those batteries are going to be charging and discharging at very high rates but that would shorten their life (and hence the number of trips). They are aiming to do 'short runs' only (100 km is mentioned in the article but the economic range is a bit larger) which makes it even more dicey economically.
Their transportation costs per KWh as quoted in the article exceed current generation costs by a factor of three already. 214 MWh is a proverbial drop in the bucket on grid scale and even 10x isn't all that much, and you can only deliver power if you have enough of those vessels to guarantee overlap at the destination or you're going to have to deal with outages.
I wonder who is investing in this project.