Tesla has teamed up with global catamaran racing championship, SailGP, to help the fledgling sport’s usually diesel-fuelled mobile recharging stations switch to solar and battery storage.

One Step Off The Grid reports that SailGP has been working with Tesla for 8 months to create a fully portable standalone clean energy solution that was used to recharge the batteries used in F50 racing catamarans to power their electronics, hydrofoils and communications systems.

Earlier this year, a mobile charging container equipped with four 13.5 kW and 15 kW solar photovoltaic power units was tested in Sydney.

 

Josef Tadich, a senior engineering manager at Tesla in Australia, wrote:

"Powered by wind and sun. Excellent application of our Powerwall system at SailGP recently in Sydney. We were able to replace the existing diesel genset with 4 Powerwalls (20kW) operating offgrid with 15kW of residential PV that then charged the individual SailGP battery packs for the race.

Grid-forming battery inverters provide a great opportunity to replace traditional gensets in applications like this, eliminating the need for genset maintenance / operations, noise and emissions, and the expensive shipment of diesel to what are often remote locations."

SailGP's goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025. After a test in Sydney, the Powerwall and solar solution can be applied to all races in all future competition seasons. “There’s no question that we want to partner with sustainable companies,” Coutts told in The Sustainability Report in February.

“And that works both ways. They want to partner with us. There are no discussions that we’re having at the moment that don’t involve sustainability.

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