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Application Story

Moeller Electric Helps Put Solar Power on The Serpentine

There may not be much new about crossing the Serpentine Lake in London's Hyde Park in a boat, but crossing it in the new Serpentine Solar Shuttle operated by BlueBird Boats is definitely a ride into the future! As its name suggests, the 14.3m catamaran-type shuttle, which can carry up to 40 passengers, is powered entirely by solar energy.

The vessel's canopy is covered with solar cells that can generate up to 2kW of power, and which are used to charge storage batteries. Power from the batteries supplies two three-phase drives via a sophisticated inverter system. With a total output of 20kW, these drives allow the boat to reach speeds of up to 15km/h.

Clearly, so innovative a vessel needs monitoring and control systems that are comprehensive, dependable and easy to use. With this in mind, the boat's designers and manufacturers, Kopf Solarschiff GmbH, scoured the market for suitable equipment that would be capable of withstanding the harsh on-board environment.

The search ended when the company's engineers evaluated the MFD-Titan and easyControl product ranges from Moeller Electric. With its integral display screen and keypad, the MFD-Titan proved to be ideal for displaying key information about the boat's operational status, and it also provides an intuitive interface for the boat's operator to adjust operational parameters.

Further, when installed, MFD-Titan units have an ingress protection rating of IP65 and an operating temperature range of -25°C to +55°C, making them an excellent choice for installation on the boat's operational console, which is protected from the weather only by the vessel's overall canopy.

The Serpentine Solar Shuttle is in fact fitted with three MFD-Titan units each with easy618 remote I/O expansion modules. The port and starboard drives have one MFD-Titan each and the third is used for ancillary functions. The units used with the drives show measured values for motor and shaft speed, as well as the voltage, current and temperature of the battery. They also show the charging status, and allow the boat operator to start and stop the bilge pumps.

The MFD-Titan for ancillary functions provides alarm signals for battery condition, bilge water levels and the drive motors. It also provides control over the boat's lighting, including the navigation lights, deck lights and effect lights, together with control for the screen wipers, heating, overhead monitors and the immobiliser.

"The easySoft programming software for the MFD-Titan incorporates a powerful yet easy to use screen editor, with access to many predefined graphical elements," said Bernd Knöpfle, project manager for marine electronics at Kopf Solarschiff. "That made it very quick and straightforward for us to create the display pages we needed to show the operational status of the vessel."

Used in conjunction with the MFD-Titan units is an easy800 intelligent control relay, and the engineers at Kopf Solarschiff were particularly impressed by how easy it proved to set up the network connections between these items. They also appreciated the flexibility of the arrangement, which allows the easy800 to talk to multiple MFD Titan units, and also provides complete freedom over how functions are divided between them.

The easy800 forms the heart of the boat's control system. It controls the hydraulic pumps for the port and starboard rudders, the fans for the battery compartment, the heating, and even the backlighting for the buttons on the control console. Once again, the Kopf Solarschiff engineers found programming to be straightforward, thanks to easySoft's graphical program editor that allows contacts and coils to be simply dragged into place on a ladder diagram.

Commenting on the Serpentine Solar Shuttle project, Bernd Knöpfle said, "The MFD-Titan units were an excellent alternative to a touch-screen HMI which would have been much more expensive and more complicated to program."

"In fact," he continued, "the straightforward programming arrangements for both the MFD-Titan and the easy800 were a major factor in allowing us to handle the project's special requirements cost effectively. Finally, the wide range of options available in the Moeller Electric easy range meant that we had no problem in addressing even the most complex of control requirements."

While this project clearly demonstrates the impressive capabilities of Moeller Electric products, their water-borne applications are by no means limited to passenger craft on small inland lakes.

In fact, easy devices, including MFD-Titan, have been approved by a large number of internationally recognised organisations, including Lloyds Register of Shipping and Germanischer Lloyd. They are, therefore, a versatile and very cost effective option for a wide range of marine applications in vessels of all kinds.

This page last updated: 16 January 2008