Foiling Electric Rescue Boat - ELINN is in the water!

ELINN stands for ELectric INNovation for emission free Sea Rescue boats and the first 6 meter / 0.6 scale demo-platform has now touched water. 

In 2020 the Swedish Sea Rescue Society (SSRS), KTH, Zparq, Micropower Group, SSPA (now RISE) and Aston Harald started a collaboration to conceptualise and build an emissions-free rescue boat. Given the life-saving application of such a boat the performance and reliability had to match or exceed what is used in the conventional rescue boats in use today.

The project is funded by Swedish Energy Agency and has been ongoing since early January 2021. The 6m / 0.6 scale boat is just the first demo platform, a 9-meter full scale boat is now being laminated in carbon fiber at Aston Harald. The 0,6 m boat has an important mission, to give important measurement data back from the electric propulsion system and to calibrate the flight control system. The hydrofoil boat uses an instable system to be able to fly above the water and reduce the propulsive power with 60 – 80%. For the rescue boat this means achieving a full operation with zero-emissions from the propulsion system (pure battery electric).

The flight control system is developed by RISE and Chalmers in collaboration. The main hydrofoil system (the yellow one in the picture), handling the roll stability is developed by Mantaray Craft.

The electric propulsion system from ZPARQ and the flight control system is tightly connected in the aft stabilizer motor pod. For the 0.6 scale boat we have 20kW propulsion power and the 9m Foiling demo platform will have a massive 100kW propulsion power.