There are some good electric drives but the torqueedo are not there yet for high thrust applications. With two thrusters will have a bollard pull better than 500kgf. That is needed due to the high windage on the large cabin. The prop shown is 540mm diameter.
There are some good electric sail drives capable of doing the job but their folding prop suits a boat intended to go one way. There are also electric pod motors but these systems cost over $20000. We are aiming for something effective and flexible with a much smaller budget in mind. The unit as you see has components costing less than $1000, most of which we already had. The prop cost $65 landed from China - not much more than model aircraft props.
The big expenditure will be in batteries if we ever get to a final design.
Rick
On 22/05/2012, at 1:36 AM, robertbiegler wrote:
--- In harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au, Rick Willoughby <rickwill@...> wrote:
> We finally took a day off from sailing the proa to have another go
> at the electric thruster;
If you want to cut down on development time, you can have a look at http://www.torqeedo.com/ (the company is German, so check the US or UK sites for an English version) for a high-end electric outboard. At http://www.ozmarine.se/OZecoDrive/Eng/IndexOZecoDriveEng.html you find electric inboards.
Rick Willoughby
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