The 12th annual MEBC – Monaco Energy Boat Challenge – took place July 2 – 6 and was another shining success in showcasing the rapid advance of non fossil-fuel propulsion – where it is at now and what lies ahead for the future. The MEBC is unique in that it brings together university students, commercial electric boat manufacturers and the larger yachting industry with races, demonstrations, technical presentations, a job fair, mentoring program and round table discussions. In the university segment alone over 1,000 students participated, coming from 42 institutions in 20 countries. Listen to this article as a podcast There are four classes of racing at the Challenge. The Energy Class and AI Class are only open to university teams, the SeaLab Class includes entries from both university teams and commercial ventures and the Open Sea Class is reserved for boats available for sale. Boundaries were pushed in every class, a number of records were broken, and at the same time the racing was taking place on the water, there were two conferences being held indoors at the host Yacht Club de Monaco: one on advanced yachting and another on hydrogen and alternative fuels. Energy Class The Energy Class is the heart of the MEBC. Each of the university teams takes a one-design catamaran hull provided by the YCM and adds their own propulsion, steering and controls. There are regulations about weight and other criteria, but the main regulation is that the boats cannot use any fossil fuel. Each university has a section reserved for them in ‘the paddocks’ along the quayside of the club, and in each of those there are students from as far away as South Africa, Indonesia and India frantically doing final prep on boats they have been working on for the past 12 months. The intense concentration of students tweaking motor, battery, solar and control systems is interrupted every few minutes by one of the teams dollying their boat along the quay to the launching ramp, another breaking out in a celebratory song or yet another team moaning in disappointment at the failure of a key element not working as planned. After being certified by the MEBC Technical Committee, the boats compete in four different races: Speed, Slalom, Endurance and Championship – each of which requires different capabilities. The Speed race is a flat out time trial held along the coastline outside the harbour of the Club. The Slalom is also a timed event, in the same stretch of water, so it requires speed combined with manoeuvrability. In the Endurance event the boats try to complete as many one kilometre (≈ .75 mi) laps as they are able to in three hours. The Championship Races are a knockout competition held within the tight confines of the Yacht Club harbour which takes the speed and steering of slalom to a whole other level as the pilots weave around multiple markers as fast as they can and then make a mad dash to the finish line. You would think it would be difficult to build a boat that does well in all events. For instance a more powerful motor for the Speed event would also be heavier, so might be a bit of a drawback in the Slalom and Championship – and also might burn up the batteries quickly in the Endurance Race. However, the University of Bologna Argonauts Team – UniBoAT – managed to build a boat that did it all. They came in first in the Speed event (tied with Italian compatriots Università di Genova), first in Slalom, first in Endurance and put on a masterful display in the Championship races, beating all comers by a healthy margin in each race. This is the fourth year in a row that UniBoAT has won the Energy Class, and their story now goes beyond the MEBC and is a great demonstration of the advances that come out of the Challenge. After their victory in 2023 – and in their quest for continual improvement – the team wanted a more powerful and efficient motor. But instead of buying one off the shelf they decided to design their own in-house. Led by Professor Nicolò Cavina, the UofB students put together a terrific 15 kiloWatt (≈ 20 hp) electric outboard and have now founded a company, Competr, to manufacture and market their patented product. Two things make the Competr stand out. One, it uses a contra-rotating propeller, which is actually two propellers spinning in different directions at the same time on the same shaft. This creates much less turbulence than a one-propeller motor and increases efficiency by as much as 16%. The other distinctive aspect is that the motor is a tractor motor – the propellers face toward the bow of the boat and pull it through the water rather than pushing it from behind. Because it was developed for the restrictions of the Energy Challenge, the motor also had to be lightweight and comes in at just 22 kg (≈48.5 lb). The proof of the Competr came not just in this year’s Energy Class, but also in the SeaLab Class. (More on that in a minute.) Another team in Energy Class that built a contra-rotating propeller was the Hydrogadz team from the Institute of Technology : Arts & Métiers in Paris, France. Not only did they build their own propellers out of resin, they took things a giant step further by creating contra-rotating toroidal propellers. In a toroidal propeller the blades are not one solid plane but are looped, looking a little bit like a bow has been tied. That loop means water flows through the propeller, which reduces noise and vibration considerably and also improves efficiency, especially when turning the boat. Commercial toroidal propellers claim efficiency improvements of up to 30%. SeaLab Class The SeaLab Class is a sort of ‘next-gen’ edition of the Energy Class where student or alumni or commercial teams are exploring viable but not yet fully commercialized non-fossil-fuel propulsion systems. It might not come as a surprise after reading the previous paragraphs that the Red Wave from Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna was the winner of the SeaLab Class. Not only that but they also took home The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Sustainable Yachting Technology Award, worth €25,000, rewarded to ‘the team whose solutions stand out for their measurable impact’. The Red Wave is a battery electric system, but SeaLab also featured a number of hydrogen powered boats developed by teams from France, Portugal, Scotland Switzerland and The Netherlands. The Netherlands entry was by TUDelft (Technical University Delft), another team which has a long history of excellence at the MEBC dating back to the first edition in 2014. The hydrogen entries The team includes both students and alumni advisors and is notable because it sets big challenges for itself every year. Last year’s team built a hydrofoiling battery and hydrogen fuel cell powered boat that crossed the English Channel. This year’s team set out to build a similar boat (they start from scratch each year), but added liquid hydrogen to the mix as well as a steering system in which the hydrofoils actually turn. In most hydrofoiling systems the foils can adjust their angle horizontally, but not laterally. Inocel, from France, also entered a boat with hydrogen fuel cells and presented their design to delegates of the Hydrogen and Alternative Fuels Conference. The 8 m (26 ft) high performance boat is powered by a 360 kw (490 hp) hydrogen fuel cell system capable that can hit speeds of 90km/h, with a range that is only 25% less than equivalent ICE powered boats. Another hydrogen entry – in the Open Sea Class – was the Dhamma Blue, which won the Jury’s Coup de Coeur Prize (roughly the ‘you touched our heart’ prize). The 7.9 metre (26 foot) dayboat has a 140 kW electric motor with a battery / hydrogen fuel cell energy system. It is the brainstorm of Spain’s Philippe Esposito and his company DH2, which is building huge solar farms in Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico and Uruguay that will use that renewable energy to create green hydrogen. The main point of a hydrogen fuel cell system is to extend the range of electric boats, and Dhamma Blue certainly made that case at Monaco where they won the Open Sea Class Endurance Race, going 33 nautical miles. AI Class This was the first year of the AI Class at the MEBC and set the stage for the future with a group of boats adapting the latest artificial intelligence solutions for the navigation of vessels of any size. There are no standardized components provided to the teams, the only restriction is that the boats must be under 12 metres (36 feet) and not use any fossil fuels. The competitions were based on things like docking precision, so while watching boats slowly manoeuvre in tight spaces is not the most exciting spectator sport in history, the technologies being tested and proven in this Class will have huge impact in the future not just for recreational boats, but for commercial and shipping vessels. There is no doubt that AI will be used to improve efficiencies on everything from runabouts to superyachts to container ships. The inaugural winner of the Class was the Antwerp Solar Boat Team from Belgium’s University of Antwerp. Open Sea Class If speed is what you’re looking for, then the Open Sea Class of the MEBC did not disappoint. Three of the world’s premier high power electric drive companies were there – Evoy, Vita, Explomar – and they were joined by the electric drive of the Porsche Macan SUV powering the Frauscher 850 Fantom Air. Also there was the much lower powered Molabo 50 kW outboard, but it was powering the much lighter F4 racing boat hull. All of those boats can move. The boats participated in a demonstration E-Rally on opening day, then competed in the Speed Record challenge (open to all classes of boats), an endurance race along the coast of Monaco and a 16 Nautical Mile Race from Monaco to Ventimiglia, Italy and back. Congratulations to Stefan Frauscher, CEO of Frauscher Boats, wh
