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Hydromover: From Concepts to Currents Episode 1
In the first episode of ‘Hydromover: From Concepts to Currents’, our esteemed guest Mr. Jan Viggo Johansen shares insights into new innovative technology, swappable batteries, and the strategy behind the Hydromover’s conception.
Mr. Johansen is the Managing Director at marinEV under Yinson GreenTech. With 15 years of experience within the FPSO industry, and broad international business experience, Mr. Johansen embraces change by optimizing data and technology utilization in harmony with a continuously developing organisation.
Before we go into the whole Hydromover, share a bit more about the different brands that you have at Yinson Green?
Mr. Johansen: Yeah, absolutely. At Yinson GreenTech, we are focusing on one of the big megatrends that’s in the market today, namely electrification. We are looking at how we can make a more efficient transition into net-zero, through both land and sea. Within YGT, we have five different brands or business units, focusing on both mobility and electrification.
So we have drivEV, which is focusing more on four-wheelers and six-wheelers, meaning cars and trucks. We have charge, which is focusing on charging infrastructure. At the moment, we are the biggest charging point operator in Malaysia. Our digital venture, which is digitalEV, develops the applications that we use for charging. You can access more than one thousand charging points across the Causeway through a partnership that we have with ComfortDelGro. Additionally to that, we also have ridEV which is our two and three-wheelers, focusing on the micro-mobility side of things like motorcycles and scooters.
And which ones of these brands are the more popular ones, you would say?
Mr. Johansen: From my side, representing marinEV, I would say that’s the most exciting to me.
Other than the Hydromover, have there been any other projects or big launches from marinEV itself?
Mr. Johansen: So for marinEV, we are focusing on the electrification of the marine industry. I think by far electrification is the most efficient way of having net-zero or zero-emission solutions for short sea shipping. We have developed two concepts as of today, which we have constructed: we have the Hydromover, which is our 25-tonne cargo vessel, and we also built a vessel called the Hydroglider which is our crude transport vessel.
Yes, I’m very interested in that and we’ll definitely touch on that a bit later. How did the innovative concept of the Hydromover come about in the first place?
Mr. Johansen: The concept of the Hydromover is really looking at sustainability and efficiency when it comes to boat electrification and efficiency of short sea shipping in general. For Yinson GreenTech’s side, we are aiming to be the leading provider of electrification solutions for the marine industry. We do this through development of an ecosystem that is able to provide sustainable solutions for the future. When the MPA launched the joint call for proposals in 2021 for electrification of marine harbour crafts, Yinson together with our Goal Zero consortium partners joined forces and came up with the design of the Hydromover as a response to their proposal.
From what I understand, there were other companies that were also in the running to get this approval. What stood out about the Hydromover?
Mr. Johansen: When we designed the vessel, we were very clear that we didn’t just want to replicate the vessels already in the market. We want to ensure that we are developing a vessel for the future, not only providing an electric motor and replicating the market we have today.
We have involved different players in the industry, from the partners in the consortium and different operators that operate our crafts today to understand their operational patterns and use cases. Then we can come up with a design and solution that can make their work easier, more efficient, and more sustainable.
For electrification solutions, we needed batteries, so we partnered up with Shift Clean Energy. We designed a swappable battery solution to ensure that the charging time of the batteries is reduced as much as possible. With that being said, it’s not really the charging time that’s reduced, but the time it takes for the vessels at port to ‘refuel’ so to say. They don’t have to stay at port for hours to charge, they can just swap the batteries at the quayside while they’re doing loading and unloading, which takes about thirty minutes.
I’m also very curious, where do you store these batteries once they’re used up? Since we’re talking about sustainability, where do these batteries go to?
Mr. Johansen: That’s a very good question, because of course a part of being sustainable is looking at the whole life cycle of the components that we’re using. One of the main features of a swappable battery is that we are able to extend the useful life of the battery to almost double of a battery that’s fixed in the boat. The reason for that is when the vessels are in the port or at the quayside for charging, they have very little time so they need to fast charge it. And fast charging means that we are reducing the lifetime of the battery.
The typical fixed battery has about a five-year lifetime. When we do swapping, we can charge the batteries with a slower pace onshore, extending their lives up to ten years. So the battery itself can last much longer. At the same time, we also see a secondary market for the batteries after the end of the useful life, where we can use them as ‘energy storage systems’. For example, car-charging where we can charge the batteries with excess power and use them to charge cars.
Now you were talking about ‘futuristic’, you know, making sure that it’s for the future. When I take a look at the Hydromover, it looks very futuristic if you ask me. Internally, what are the elements you would say that are very futuristic? Something that sets it apart from other vessels?
Mr. Johansen: If you look at the traditional vessel and the traditional way of operating a vessel, you have a steering wheel and a throttle. When you go inside the Hydromover, you will see that it’s big touchscreens and joysticks, so it’s more like it’s part of a game. (Ruth: Like a Tesla of vessels?) It’s a Tesla of the marine environment, that’s for sure. And part of being futuristic is the electrified vessels and clean energy, that’s very important, but so is digitalization, being able to make the most out of the vessels.
So we have a quite advanced system on board from a company we are collaborating with, which is developing autonomous vessel technology. There are sensors along the vessel which creates a situational awareness around it, and we use AI to avoid collision, automatic docking, we can also use it in combination with autopilot and supporting going from A to B. This increases the safety of the vessel as well as the efficient use of the vessel.
In terms of having a manual throttle, a manual choice of route and so forth, in the future when vessels become fully autonomous, when the regulations are in place to address the challenges with being autonomous, we will be able to run this vessel much more efficiently and safely than we are today. If you go into the vessel, you will see that our chairs are 3D-printed. First of all, to save weight, but also they’re produced in a sustainable manner so there’s no waste of material when they’re produced.
Now I’m very curious and I’m very excited, I want to know how was launch day? I feel like I want to step on board and have a look at all this, because you’re telling me it’s very futuristic, something we’re not going to see in a lot of vessels.
Mr. Johansen: Absolutely, I think launch day was a day that we at marinEV as well as Yinson GreenTech and the rest of the Goal Zero consortium look back at as a very proud day. I remember arriving and meeting my colleagues from marinEV and our Goal Zero consortium partners with big smiles. You could really see that we are really proud of what we’ve managed to accomplish in less than eighteen months from the issuance of the Call-for-Proposals. I don’t think the launch itself disappointed; it was representatives from all the partners, from suppliers, from governments, from financiers, from media and the likes. We were able to demonstrate the journey that we had through videos, fantastic speeches from the participants, as well as the highlights we were able to take. Unfortunately, our VIPs could only come for the first day, but they took the first trip on Singapore’s first electric cargo vessel.
Let’s talk a little bit about how much cargo the Hydromover can carry by itself?
Mr. Johansen: So when we designed the vessel, as I said, we didn’t want to replicate what’s out there today, we want a vessel that can reduce the number of vessels needed to support the port of Singapore rather than adding on vessels to the existing fleets. We found a size of vessel that is optimized in terms of consolidating load, to be able to take more loads and supply to several ships at the same time. With the present setup for the Hydromover which covers about five hundred vessels of the existing market today, we can take about 25 tonnes of cargo load and we would then be able to travel about forty nautical miles at eight knot speed.
Any plans to make this on a bigger scale, maybe it travels a little further?
Mr. Johansen: That’s an excellent question. I think that’s what everybody’s asking about as well. One of the beauties with swappable batteries is that the technology of batteries and these systems is going very fast, meaning that the technology we installed today may be almost obsolete down the road. But when it comes to swappable batteries, we are actually able to replace the battery itself inside what we call an E-Pod so that we can upgrade the batteries as new technology arises or when the batteries become obsolete. We can do this without taking the vessel out of service as we would be able to have spare batteries for the vessel.
How many of the Hydromovers do we have now, in Singapore?
Mr. Johansen: Presently, we have one, we have the prototype. So we are preparing now for operational trials which will commence very soon where the operators in Singapore will be able to trial the vessel on their commercial routes, take a load on the vessel out to their customers. Of course, they will provide valuable feedback to us as well for optimizing the vessel, for commercial production of the vessel.
Do you think the Hydromover will be very relevant to our neighboring countries? Any plans to expand it to other regions?
Mr. Johansen: I think definitely so. The Hydromover has been tailored for the Singapore market. I think this is one of the most important things when we’re looking at marine electrification, that we are looking at the operational pattern of how we’re going to use the vessels. Based on the speed which is required for the vessel, how much cargo it needs to take, the distance it needs to travel, what are the typical weather conditions and so forth, so that we make the most optimum vessel for that usage pattern.
That means that we are receiving quite a lot of interest both from Malaysia and Indonesia on similar solutions, so I think we will see good use of the concepts we have developed for Singapore also for the region.
Alright, thank you so much Jan Viggo! We’ve gone through some very interesting elements of the Hydromover so now it’s time for some juicy discussions.
But let’s not do this in the very first episode—let’s keep this for Episode 2 of Hydromover: From Concepts to Currents!
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