2024 show news
EXPO NEWS Day 3: Battery dimensioning tool for naval architects and engineers
Echandia
Echandia (Booth 3040) has debuted WattWizard, a helpful tool for heavy-duty maritime electrification battery dimensioning, at this year’s show. Naval architects and engineers can simply enter the relevant vessel data into the tool early in the design process to optimize battery sizing and ensure efficient performance. The tool analyzes the vessel’s typical operating conditions, including speed, load and duration. This information helps determine the energy needed for propulsion and auxiliary systems.
WattWizard accounts for vessel size, weight and hydrodynamic properties, offering solutions suitable for larger vessels that may require more battery capacity, as well as for smaller ones that can operate efficiently with less. The tool assesses peak power demands during acceleration or maneuvering, to ensure sufficient power availability. It also considers power spikes during dynamic operations.
Depending on the vessel’s layout, WattWizard can suggest optimal ESS configurations (series, parallel, or hybrid), balancing energy density, weight and available space. It can also evaluate charging options (shore power, onboard generators, or fast-charging stations) and recommend suitable charging rates and protocols.
“We've chosen Electric & Hybrid Marine Expo to launch our new dimensioning tool that we've chosen to call WattWizard,” said Felix Backgård, technical sales manager, Echandia. “It’s for naval architects, system integrators or owners to use at an early stage, although it could be at a late stage, too, to help them figure out what size battery they need. Ideally, you would use it at an early stage, because then you can do a lot of iteration on your design and really explore the options,” he continued.
“For example, if you have a strict weight requirement or if you slow down a little bit [operational speed] then the battery system is going to be smaller, because you don't use too much energy. All these inputs allow you to find the right size for the project you're working on. This is the first tool that, to my knowledge, takes into account the LTO chemistry, and whether it is NMC or LFP.
“We’ve had a lot of customer requests for this, and so far, the reaction from visitors has been great, with a lot of very fruitful dialog. The feedback has been amazing, and we are very humbled, but this is also only a first generation – we want to improve it continuously, which is why it's so important to get feedback from stakeholders.”
On that note, Backgård said Echandia had received a steady stream of visitors from the beginning of the first morning of the show: “We've seen a very good visitor profile – a lot of operators that have electric vessels today and are already mature in their thinking; and naval architects that were new to us, which is very good. They are working on or have done vessel installations in the past. We’ve also seen system integrators, many of whom we already have a very good relationship with, but we want to make it even better and respond faster to their requests.”
Booth 3040