Electric boat launched

An electric boat has been designed, built and commissioned for trips around Malta and Gozo by the Department of Industrial Electrical Power Conversion at the University of Malta.

The research team, which started working on the boat in 2005, was led Joseph Cilia. It presented the first prototype boat was presented in 2007.

The boat, launched by Resources Minister George Pullicino this morning, is equipped with the latest state of the art technology. The outboard motor is powered from a brushless threephase motor. Battery and position information is collected from a battery management unit and the data is transmitted via bluetooth to a mobile that is used to display the battery status and control the on board hi-fi audio system.

A number of technical papers were presented at international conferences worldwide and the work was awarded the Best Paper Award at the European Lead Acid Battery Conference held in Warsaw in September last year.

Dr Cilia thanked all the sponsors and said that the university was presently investing in the building of a laboratory for research and development on electrical transport equipped with the latest technology. This would be used for undergraduate and postgraduate students to carry out research on electric transport and other methods of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.