Knut Müller, Head of Marine and Government Business at MTU, said: “The combination of diesel engines and electric motors, in addition to batteries and their variable areas of application, offer yacht owners significant benefits.
“Silent cruising, combined with low vibration and emission levels, offer tremendous gains in terms of on-board comfort. High performance levels, efficiency, environmental compatibility and the flexibility of the propulsion system are great interest today when operating a yacht.
“We believe that the focus in the future yacht industry will be more and more on smart and innovative system solutions rather than just focussing on the power output level.”
The new Sunseeker yacht will have an integrated MTU hybrid propulsion system. It will consist of two 12-cylinder MTU Series 2000 diesel engines (each delivering around 1,432 kW/ 1,947 hp), on-board generators, electric propulsion modules, transmission system, batteries, control and monitoring systems and can be expanded on a modular basis.
The yacht will be provided with six different operating modes that are easy to operate, including the automated “smart hybrid” and “charge hybrid” modes, which enable all power sources to be used as required. In an “electric mode” the yacht propulsion and on-board power can be supplied continuously by the generators, providing optimisation of fuel consumption and comfort on-board for long and overnight passages.
In “silent mode”, which uses power solely from the batteries, up to 40 minutes of propulsion and 120 minutes of on-board power are available with each pair of MTU batteries installed, with no emissions produced whatsoever.
sunseeker.com.au