The first E motion hybrid Lagoon 500 is now being offered for sale by The Catamaran Company of Ft. Lauderdale, Lagoon's largest U.S. dealer.
The boat, Hybrid Motion, made a successful transatlantic run last year from France to Florida, with Electric Marine Propulsion CEO Dave Tether taking the helm on the last leg from the Bahamas to Ft. Lauderdale.
"This was a major event for us - our first production-line Lagoon 500 - and our first Atlantic crossing," says Tether. "We're hoping for many more to come."
The boat was extensively instrumented for sea trials with numerous data-logging functions recording speed, motor rpm, electricity consumption, battery charge and temperature, diesel fuel consumption and electricity regeneration.
The instrumentation made it possible to track the performance and integration of the many new components in the propulsion system, including twin 16 kw motors, twin 15 kw generators and a prototype energy management module (EMM) to control the flow of electricity throughout the system. |
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| Stock Lagoon 500 under sail. In the E motion hybrid version, the twin 55 hp diesels are replaced by two 16 kw electric motors. |
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Following inshore trials between the Bordeaux launch site and La Rochelle, the 50 foot luxury cat set out for the new world. Hybrid Motion headed southwest across the Bay of Biscay and rounded the coast of Spain at La Coruña. The crew pushed the big cat hard, with multiple 24-hour runs exceeding 200 nautical miles at over nine knots average speed.
Regeneration under sail often reached 3 kw from each motor, easily keeping the 144 vdc battery pack topped up. "That's equivalent to dockside power service around 50 amps," Tether notes. Although the crew made liberal use of the big cat's many electrical amenities, which include watermaker, air conditioning, hot water heater, |
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microwave oven, autopilot and big screen TV, the diesel generator stayed off during open ocean runs, with all electricity coming from regeneration. The genset came on only during extended motoring stints and overnight anchorages.
One problem cropped up early in the voyage when a stuffing box sprung a leak west of the Canaries. The crew turned back east to the islands for repairs, finally ending up in Las Palmas. By the time the captain found a yard able to haul out the big boat and replace the stuffing boxes, several weeks had gone by.
Underway again, the rest of the voyage across the Atlantic was uneventful. Once in the Caribbean, Hybrid Motion put into the British Virgin Islands for a layover at The Catamaran Company resort in Tortola while the crew obtained U.S. visas.
The crew then took the boat to Freeport in the Bahamas, where Tether flew over to meet them and bring Hybrid Motion across the Gulf Stream to Ft. Lauderdale. There he modified the new system and conducted a detailed analysis of the prototype EMM, which the crew had had difficulties with during the voyage. A more advanced EMM is now being developed under the HYMAR project.
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