Flanders Make co-designs the battery of the future for the maritime sector

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has set the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050 compared to 2008. One of the solutions to achieve this goal is to electrify the fleet. However, there are several problems that make the costs mount up considerably:

• The technology for batteries for maritime use is not yet sufficiently mature.
• Ships are typically built in small series, which greatly limits the economies of scale during production.
• Current battery systems are not designed for maritime use that requires both heavy peak currents and long-term high-energy tasks (manoeuvring in ports vs. cruising at a certain speed). As a result, current systems rapidly lose capacity.
• This capacity loss is compensated by overdimensioning the current battery systems by a factor of 2 to 10 (!).

In the SEABAT project (Solutions for largE bAtteries for waterBorne trAnsporT) we work on a full electric marine battery concept based on:

• A combination of different battery cells in a battery pack that can deliver both high-energy jobs and heavy peak currents.
• New concepts for on-board converters.
• Solutions for the production of this technology based on production techniques from the automotive sector.