[mschuster91]

> But does the overall cost of these 'WindWings' recoup over the lifetime of cargo ship.

Well... 1 ton of bunker fuel costs about 650 dollars, so you're looking at 7.5k saved each day, or 150k per trip (assuming an average of 20 days at sea). Cargo ships have ridiculous life expectancies measured in decades, so it's very likely to make a significant dent.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109263/monthly-vlsfo-bu...

[dtech]

Cargo ships cost $100 million or thereabout, and operate for at least 30 years. Estimating that about 1/3'rd of that is time where these would be useful, this would save about $27 million and the savings grow with inflation, so that's no small change.

[naveen99]

> savings grow with inflation

Wat?

[paholg]

If you're saving a $1 in fuel today, then in ten years doing the same thing you'll save more than $1 because fuel will cost more.

I'm not sure it's a useful characterization, since inflation affects everything, but it's not wrong.

[Johnny555]

Cargo ships have ridiculous life expectancies measured in decades, so it's very likely to make a significant dent.

Note that 12 tons/day was the best case, the average was 3 tons, so that's more like $2000/day or around $400K/year assuming the ship is at sea 200 days/year.

Anything on a ship with moving parts has significant maintenance costs, so it'd be nice if they had a ballpark figure of the installation/maintenance costs as well as expected lifetime of the system.

And what happens in a serious storm? It looks like these can be rotated but not folded down flat, so what happens in unpredictable winds during a storm?

[jcgrillo]

They do fold flat [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/AB7cLkSVmJA

[Johnny555]

Oh that's cool, in the photo in the article they looked too tall to lay flat without interfering with each other.