Photon Marine

Marine Range Estimation Calculator for EV Systems

Photon Marine is developing electric outboard propulsion systems and intelligent energy management software for commercial boat fleets. These fleets operate in tourism, transportation, and mariculture sectors, traversing the most fragile marine ecosystems in the world. One of the primary considerations for transitioning to electric propulsion is whether or not the batteries will provide sufficient range for a particular use case. Because each case is unique, blending a combination of vessel type, distance traversed, operating speed, charging infrastructure available, and ambient weather conditions, the answer to "how far can I go?" depends on a number of factors. This student team worked to to build a real-time range estimation tool, as part of Photon Marine's onboard software platform, in order to understand how useful ICE motor data can be in modeling for electric systems. The system this student team worked to build could incorporate environmental data from wind and tide sensors, understand where the vessel departed from and needed to return to, and keep a long of boat performance over time. This would allow the system to learn from previous trips to create accurate range estimation. This student team also worked to develop an early functioning prototype for range calculation. As a stretch goal, this student team worked to produce a design or a prototype for a public-facing website tool so that prospective customers can pre-qualify whether electric propulsion suits them. Such a tool might also gather a few more data points such as cost of electricity and fuel costs in order to determine payback period for an electric propulsion system.