Charge Made Good

Welcome back to another weekly blog post from Charge Made Good!

This time, we would like to talk about energy management. Most of you will know something about Smart Grids. What it implies is that all the separate elements of an energy system can communicate with one another, allowing for very efficient management. However, large fluctuations in a system’s scale are currently difficult to manage effectively. The answer to this issue is to make the system large; not only the system’s ability to generate electricity, but to increase it’s capacity to utilise it as well. Big fluctuations in the system’s energy harvesting can be used to make life far more comfortable, and not letting that charge made go to waste. This also allows you to live on your yacht in the same manner as you would on land, letting you use your appliances and water with the same leisure as you would in your house. This comfort only requires an increased consumption of electricity.

If we expand the Smart Grid to a full Smart Energy System, what we are doing is fully integrating the ‘transportation sector’ (which, in our case, is our motor-sailing drivetrain), the ‘heating/cooling sector’ (which, in our case, are large electric heat pumps and an instant hot water califont), and being fully electric, these together help manage the fluctuations of renewable energy we generate. They all operate together as a single communicating system.

This has lead to the design criteria.

1. That you can live aboard as you would in a modern apartment.
2. The rig and sail plan are optimized for motor-sailing in all conditions.
3. The ability to safely make trans-ocean journeys short-handed.
4. Absolutely everything would be done to ensure the vessel remains zero-emissions for it’s entire life-span.

To get energy into the system is a matter of installed capacity and availability; or how how often it is contributing to something. By optimising the drive-train for motor-sailing, a subtle change of course and angle is able to contribute to the energy management of the vessel for long periods of effective trickle-charging. This new way of managing energy harvesting, sailing operation, and the Smart Energy System is called CMG – Charge Made Good. Sailing to your ‘CMG’ allows you to travel to your destination with a known future battery state. It functions for both trip-planning and live for instant feedback and adjustment.

We believe that CMG is a truly intuitive system for sailors. Adjusting course, angle, and speed is something we find enjoyable to do. If sailing is your way of managing your energy supply, and you enjoy sailing, you will of course enjoy CMG as it combines the activity you enjoy with the management of your energy supply.