"Turning wind into profit” – Stephan Wrage couldn’t have chosen a better slogan for his project, which at first glance sounds more like a beachboy’s dream than a successful business idea. Or does the concept of taking kytes (so far only known from the watersport “kyte surfing”), attaching them to massive cargo ships in order to reduce their gas consumption sound realistic to you?

The German engineer proved all the pessimists around him wrong by turning his vision into reality with his company SkySails located in Hamburg. His literally biggest success: this summer the first 140 meter long cargo ship will conquer the open sea equipped with one of Wrage’s Skysails.
The owners of that ship simply got convinced by numbers: Given optimal weather and wind conditions fuel costs can be lowered by the most 50 percent, the least 10 – 35 percent (in a yearly average). Taken the finite oil resources into account experts estimate that the oil price could rise from 40 $ a barrel to 120 $ a barrel till 2030. In this light the hybrid system of conventional power and wind energy provided by SkySail provides a real advantage in the competitive shipping business in the long run. That justifies the investment of between 500.000 - 2.5 million euros for a SkySail.

Ship owners are not the only ones thinking that the concept has a future. The project gets funding by the EU and the German government. The UN also recommends using SkySails in light of climate change and the massive amount of CO2-emissions (approx. 600 – 800 m tonnes) shipping contributes overall – in comparison twice as much than aviation worldwide.

Stephan Wrage even has good news for all the owners of luxurious yachts among us: kytes in smaller versions are also available – easy to install you get the speed of a motor boat but not the sound. That’s called selling a product – for the greater good of saving the environment. Right on!
Fotos: Website