Faroboats, a fairly new company in Lisbon, has a creative idea about how you can recharge the batteries on your electric boat. They’ve just launched the Faro Powerdock, a floating dock with solar panels.
The Powerdock will work with any electric boat, but it will charge a 16-foot Faro5 electric boat in less than three hours. The Powerdock’s roof holds four 450-watt solar arrays of four panels each, with a total output of 2.7 kW. You also can order it with wind turbines to help produce more energy than just the solar panels.
Under sunny conditions, the batteries on the Powerdock will be charged in six to eight hours. The battery pack of the Powerdock is then used to charge the battery pack of the electric boat in its berth.
The dock comes with three models: the S10, with 10.2 kWh battery capacity; S20, with 20.4 kWh, and S30, with 30.6 kWh.
The Powerdock is built to fit in a single berth at a marina. It’s actually 21’5” long and 13’ 2” wide.
It’s also towable, so you can take it with you to use at your summer house, for example, or to set up at a favorite cove or beach. You don’t have to rely on finding a local power grid to recharge the batteries on your boat. And the Powerdock comes with an integrated winch, so you can raise your boat out of the water to protect the hull and props.
Faroboats was launched in 2020. “We’re here to give you a glimpse of the future,” says its CEO, Nuno Frazao. Their first boat, the Faro5 (pictured), won a Gussies Electric Boat Award last year. The Faro5 is made with Japanese cedar wood from the Portuguese Azores.
Read more: http://faroboats.com
