<<the next generation naval electric ships>>
What sense of next generation do you mean? I assume you mean the next active contract since there are still many naval applications where the motors that AMSC has to offer in the next 5-10 years won't be sufficient.
Basically the superconducting motors are great for applications where efficiency is key, like most commercial marine applications, but most naval vessels are optimized for max power output instead of efficiency (the need for speed).
The power from the latest GE marine turbine is over 40 MW and the most powerful proposed AMSC motor (is it built yet?) is only 25 MW. For certain naval applications, I am sure that a couple of 25MW motor pods will be fine, but what about destroyers, guided missile destroyers, aircraft carriers, etc? A DDG only has 2 props to deliver ~75MW , I think a CVN has 4 props to deliver ~64MW.
That's the motor side, as for the power plant, I looked for DoD fuel cells and all I found was this link for a 2.5 MW demo fuel cell with a 500KW powerplant for trials mtiresearch.com . This just is not in the ballpark for a lot of naval applications. Is there a bigger one you can point me to? As they grow in wattage, fuel cells will be more useful for commercial marine applications, but I think there's a long way to go to before they can get into a lot of naval vessels. |
