In the news: Spinverse's client to power Viking Line Cruise Ferry with wind
Kauppalehti - a leading Finnish language commerce-oriented newspaper - had just covered major development of one of the Spinverse's clients - Norsepower Oy Ltd. The company announced its agreement to install a rotor sail solution onboard of a Viking Line’s cruise ferry. This deal heralds the world’s first liquefied natural gas/wind electric propulsion hybrid passenger traffic ship.
As a leading provider of low-maintenance, software operated, and data verified auxiliary wind propulsion systems, Norsepower is equipping Viking Line's M/S Viking Grace, with its Rotor Sail Solution. The "Innovation of the Year 2016" award-winning solution is fully automated and senses whenever the wind is strong enough to deliver fuel savings, at which point the rotors automatically starts optimising crew time and resources. Furthermore, it can be installed on new vessels or retrofitted on existing ships without off-hire costs.
M/S Viking Grace currently operates in the northern Baltic Sea between Turku (Finland) and Stockholm (Sweden), and is already one of the most environmentally-friendly cruise ferries in the global maritime industry. With the addition of Norsepower’s technology, the vessel will further reduce its carbon emissions by circa 900 tonnes annually, which is equivalent to cutting 300 tonnes of liquefied natural gas fuel per year.
The principle on which Norsepower built their innovation is knows as the Magnus effect – the commonly observed phenomenon in which a spinning cylinder or ball curves away from its principal flight path, similarly to the curved path of a golf ball..
“Norsepower is a great example of a company that has an innovative product fit for global markets”, says Project Manager Tapio Poutiainen of Spinverse. "Securing the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument funding with the help of Spinverse, enabled Norsepower to achieve the full speed in its growth, leading to this impressive development".
Read the online version of the article (in Finnish)