Solar Sailing

Published: Tuesday, March 31, 2020

EP Carry is the lightest, complete electric motor system with plenty of power and range for days of ship to shore duties. For dinghy use, a quick charge from your house bank each night means you never worry about range. But, if you have a small camp cruiser and you want to motor all day, you’ve previously been limited by battery size, cost, and recharge time—enter a solar solution.

Solar power generation is five times higher on a sunny day versus a cloud-covered day so it’s no surprise that most motor systems produce very poor performance unless the sun is shining. However, with EP Carry’s unique level of efficiency at all speeds, you can go 27 nautical miles when it’s dark and stormy or 41 nautical miles when it’s clear and sunny, all without touching your battery backup power.

This level of performance was shown on Swe’Pea in last year’s inaugural Salish 100 cruise, which used a solar setup that cost about the same as a spare lithium battery. Swe’Pea traveled 120 solar-powered nautical miles without recharging ashore once. That means that solar, when sized appropriately and used alongside a motor as efficient as the EP Carry, becomes a viable seasonal distance cruising option regardless of the sky conditions.

EP Carry’s President, Joe Grez, gives seminars outlining the four keys to solar powering that scale to all boat sizes, covering:

A displacement hull form properly loaded and trimmed.
High efficiency (Crystalline) cells covering >30% of the boat’s footprint, unshaded by rigging etc.
An electric motor with gear reduction, enough power for hull speed in calm conditions, and with more than 45% “electrical to propulsive” efficiency. (EP Carry is 60%; a trolling motor is less than 20%.)
A battery capacity of greater than 2 hours at the motor’s 50% power setting.

Go to epcarry.com today and watch the presentation for more information on how easy it can be to go solar.

This article first appeared in the Spring Issue (Mar/Apr) 2020 of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.

tags: Batteries & Chargers, Engines, Environmental Impact