HaveBlue – Sailing Away Clean With a Hydrogen Fuel Cell
by TreeHugger on 05. 5.05
Sailing to me is about getting away from it all; and living in Los Angeles, that usually means getting away from pollution. That's why it's very disappointing when I see smog hanging over some remote harbor, usually produced by dozens of boats 'enjoying nature'. So, I was delighted to learn that HaveBlue, a Ventura California based company, has created a system which produces propulsion and power for your boat from...water. The clever folks at HaveBlue recognized that if you are going to use an oxygen and hydrogen fuel cell for something, you might as well be floating on the fuel (H2O).
Their technology utilizes multiple renewable resources (sun, wind & motion) to clean and separate the Hydrogen and Oxygen from the sea water. It then uses the hydrogen in a fuel cell for power. While all of these technologies are not brand spanking new, putting it all together on a boat and powering that boat with the hydrogen is an amazing step in applying hydrogen fuel cell technology. The dream is that HaveBlue can remove polluting fuel from the sailing equation, and may even tackle larger polluters in the future. HaveBlue is scheduled to begin all-hydrogen sea trials this summer (feel free to invite me along for a ride!). I hope to see several HaveBlue systems in the coming years, and less smog. ::HaveBlue [by T. McGee]
Don't get your hopes up - IIRC from the popular science issue a few months ago, each haveblue install is completely custom and priced from $500,000 and up.
That's nothin'. I think money must grow on some hidden trees in California or something, because prices here are out of this world. A little shack down the street with bullet holes in the windows, and 30 feet square of property just sold for 3 million- and I don't live in a 'nice' neighborhood.
But that being said, boats tend to be black holes for money, and I think if your in the market for a yacht, spending an additional cool mil to trick it out isn’t a big deal for these people. And also, as with most new technology, price is partially due to markets of scale. Early adopters will always pay to be first. Primarily because it has to be custom designed and applied to already existing technology. However, as production increases and these technologies become standardized, prices should fall dramatically. I might be 130 by then, but the anti-aging pill will have me looking a young 65.