Location: Droitwich, United Kingdom
Date: 5th May 2021
Ortomarine are pleased to announce that they will be holding the UK’s first electric propulsion performance trial for narrowboats. As one of the leading builders of greener narrowboats, they are keen to debunk the notion that “the technology is not there yet” by providing real life performance data from a number of their boats.
To date, they have built 3 All Electric, 3 Serial Hybrids and 7 Parallel Hybrids which, in conjunction with their innovative Ortomate™ system, that collects and uploads the boat’s data to the cloud, gives them a very informative database of how each boat performs.
Individual boat data is interesting, but Ortomarine have always wanted to do a comparative test, looking at how each boat performs in a typical 8hr cruising day. Each of the vessels taking part in the trials, will follow the same route, on the same day and in identical conditions to provide the most objective comparison of the different designs.
“Here we go again” a traditional diesel-powered narrowboat (Ortomarine’s first Private boat launched in 2016) will be the benchmark by which the electric boats will be compared in terms of handling, speed, acceleration/braking and consumption. Starting in Worcester on the River Severn, the flotilla will cruise up river before turning on to the Droitwich canal at Hawford and finishing at Droitwich Spa marina.
There will be three Serial Hybrids, two Parallel Hybrids and three diesel powered narrowboats taking part in the trial. In addition to the electric propulsion trials, another and equally important Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) fuel trial will also be conducted. Two of the diesel powered boats will do a “head to head” comparison, one using conventional red diesel and the other using the latest HVO fuel supplied by Crown Oil.
Although many new narrowboats are now being supplied with some form of electric engine, retro-fitting electric propulsion to existing diesel powered craft is difficult and costly. HVO diesel could be the solution for existing craft and this trial hopes to show that in performance terms HVO diesel, matches conventional red diesel, but reduces greenhouse gases by up to 90%, does not suffer from diesel bug and can be stored in the fuel tank for up to 10 years.
The event will take place in Worcestershire on Saturday the 29th May 2021. The eight narrowboats will start at Worcester, cruise up the river Severn to Hawford, where they will join the Droitwich canal and finish later that day at Droitwich Spa Marina.
Ortomarine will publish the results of both the electric and HVO trials, as soon as possible after the event and hope it will provide further evidence that greener solutions can provide the performance needed and are available now.
For further details, please contact Ortomarine.
E-Mail: info@ortomarine.co.uk
Telephone: 01299 489424
