The project seeks the decarbonization of waterborne transport through the development of new battery system concepts.
On May 23, 2024, the European project SEABAT, funded by the HORIZON 2020 framework program of the European Union, was presented at the technical conferences at the NAVALIA 2024 fair. NAVALIA is the most important fair dedicated to the naval sector in Spain and the third in Europe, in which more than 400 exhibitors and 900 represented entities participate.
SEABAT aims to provide the maritime transport sector with a full-electric maritime hybrid concept based on combining modular high-energy batteries and high-power batteries, novel converter concepts and production technology solutions derived from the automotive sector. This pioneering and revolutionary solution will effectively and efficiently contribute to the decarbonization of the maritime transport sector through its electrification, giving the sector the possibility of achieving complete decarbonization by 2050.
This technical conference was organized by SOERMAR with the title ‘NAVAL ENERGY OF THE FUTURE: Innovative Energy Storage Solutions in European Projects focused on Decarbonization and Development with Batteries’, and presented by Cayetano Hoyos, leader of the Dissemination and Communication Work Package.
During the day, the audience was shown the latest developments and results achieved, highlighting the modularity of the proposed solution, which will allow shipowners to reduce both the acquisition costs of the system and the subsequent operational costs, and will also be able to benefit from economies of scale through the use of low-cost, standardized modular components.
In this sense, the viability of the SEABAT results was demonstrated as a strategy for its application to ferries and vessels destined for short-distance maritime transport. The drastic cost reduction with respect to conventional battery systems, both from the point of view of the shipowner and the shipyard, was the key aspect of the round of questions, and what aroused the greatest interest among attendees.
