Water
Solar powered boats have mainly been limited to rivers and canals, but in 2007 an experimental 14m catamaran, the Sun21 sailed the Atlantic from Seville to Miami, and from there to New York.
Japan's biggest shipping line Nippon Yusen KK and Nippon Oil Corporation said solar panels capable of generating 40 kilowatts of electricity would be placed on top of a 60,213 ton car carrier ship to be used by Toyota Motor Corporation.
In 2010, the Tûranor PlanetSolar, a 30 metre long, 15.2 metre wide catamaran yacht powered by 470 square metres of solar panels, was unveiled. It is set to circumnavigate the Earth and is so far the largest solar-powered boat ever built.
Various demonstration systems have been made. Curiously, none yet takes advantage of the huge power gain that water cooling would bring.
In 2007, the PV powered boat Transatlantic 21 successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean power only by solar electricity.
Read more about this topic: Solar Vehicle
Famous quotes containing the word water:
“The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe.... The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others.”
—Janet Malcolm (b. 1934)
“The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn’t ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“A single monk carries his own bucket of water; two monks carry their bucket of water together; but when there are three monks, there is no water at all.”
—Chinese proverb.