The green Vendée Globe! Everyone has been hoping for this for many years, but the racers did not seem ready. The Vendée Globe is above all a race and the skippers of the competitors. As long as it is simpler, more reliable and less penalizing in terms of performance to run a diesel engine to produce the electricity required by the boat, the diesel engine will remain the choice of the competitors.
Indeed, Michel Desjoyeaux (twice winner) said he didn't use a wind turbine, as its aerodynamic drag was braking too much. Extra litres of diesel, well positioned at the bottom, were less of a disadvantage..
It was Yannick Bestaven, who entered the 2008 Vendée Globe on Aquarelle.com with the first hydrogenerator on his transom. At the time, the product designed by the engineer Matthieu Michou was producing so much that the skipper had installed an electric heater under the seat of his chart table. To dissipate the overflow of energy! Alas, with his dismasting the day after the start, he was unable to prove the merits of the system. But the revolution was on its way and today almost 100% of the boats that took part in the last Vendée Globe were equipped with one (or more) hydrogenerators.
For the competitors, things are changing right now. The electric motors are totally reliable and the energy supply to run them, together with the hydrogenerators, is efficient. All that's left is to store this energy and use it when the time comes.
The Vendée Globe regulations oblige boats to be equipped with a propulsion system capable of making them progress at 5 knots for 5 hours. An insoluble problem with an electric motor and the current batteries. Conrad Colman, who is the first to have managed to complete a round the world voyage without using fossil fuels, got around the problem by taking on board a generator (diesel-powered, therefore) capable of supplying electricity to his engine during this time.
Today, taking an electric engine on board and its batteries is lighter than a diesel engine and its 250 litres of diesel used in a Vendée Globe. It is this fact that should attract skippers to this solution: weight saving! In fact Alex Thomson and Paul Mailhat are currently looking into this question for their future boats...
So will the 2020 Vendée Globe be the first race without fossil fuels? Probably not for this edition, but we should see the arrival of a new generation of boats that do without diesel..
