Man spent 200 days building a solar-powered explorer yacht that can run forever
26 comments
·November 4, 2025Liftyee
Clickbait warning... The video that appeared at the top of the page (followed by a bunch of blank space, presumably blocked ads) featuring a superyacht is NOT about the yacht in the title, although it does also have solar panels.
dobladov
He literately mentions in the video (1:55) that the solar panels can not power the electric engine but support it.
Clickbait article, that's not worth anyone's time.
zitterbewegung
YT link https://youtu.be/KKypmuc2adk?si=qRcWWtSv30G5fj_m This is really interesting since I could see this as a drone platform that could loiter near a target or just provide intel.
dzhiurgis
One of my dreams is to find dismasted catamaran with seized engines and re-power entirely with solar+batteries for local trips.
By my estimate whole setup would cost less than a single marine diesel engine.
ugh123
Most important number is missing: how much did it cost to make?
dzhiurgis
18 panels is like $1.3k. Same for inverter. Battery stars at $2k for 15kWh, but I'd go for used car battery, so perhaps $6k for 60kWh, much less if you got means to drop battery yourself. That leaves you with propulsion. While electric motors are pretty cheap, marine ones still seem at rip off. DIY solutions from China start at 3k and complete outboard is like 15k.
So overall I'd say for $10k for power and another $5k for motor.
stonogo
There is almost no real information here, not even the name of the engineer. The pictures are credited to "true north yachts", and searching for this reveals a patreon that talks a lot about sovereignty and also youtube growth hacking. There's a patreon (called truenortharchive, not sure what it's archiving) and there doesn't appear to be any substantial information about this actual boat.
All available information seems to be in this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX5EraBZ0As
There are a couple of shots of the plywood construction, but no hard information. At one point he shows the camera the power control interface, and at another he shows the outboard motor, both of which seem to be off-the-shelf at https://www.epropulsion.com/
jeffbee
"Yacht that runs forever without fuel" has kinda been done, many times.
toomuchtodo
With wind? Sure. With solar PV? Only recently. You're still going to need a watermaker to make fresh water, and consumables for it, along with food, but with enough solar, it is very compelling when you might have challenges sourcing diesel (whether financially or logistically). Scratches the self sufficiency itch to an extent, sailing solarpunk style.
(have yachting friends in the cruising around the world way, not the wealthy yachting way)
denuoweb
It's pretty crazy that the article does not state how many theoretical watts the yacht has. It looks like maybe 4,000 watts from the photo of the panels.
KaiserPro
The video that the person made has the stats. (see further up, its only about 8 minutes)
From memory its a 5.4kw array with 8kw motor. At 400w it can (on a calm inland sea) cruise at around 3 knots. Top speed of ~9 knots.
Its made from plywood so its super light. he wants to take it across the atlantic, which I think is brave given that its not got any compartments(that I could see in the video), so any breech means it'll sink in minutes.
eptcyka
I wonder how much battery storage it has. Would suck to only be able to use the sauna when the sun is shining at full blast anyway.
stronglikedan
good thing about boats is that they can move a lot of heavy batteries relatively easily
eptcyka
The boat is marketed as being lightweight.
lisbbb
Water + batteries, lol. What could go wrong?
stonogo
The guy who made it says it has a 6kW motor, but does not reveal details about his battery or PV array. Based on that number and the brief view of the motor, I'm guessing he bought this: https://www.epropulsion.com/products/electric-outboards/navy...
system2
Infinite scrolling blogs are disgusting.
stronglikedan
Especially when it's so resource intensive that it makes my music skip, and then the page becomes unresponsive when I try to back out of it.
themafia
Forever. Or until your charge controller dies. Or your batteries fail. Or your plywood yacht hits a storm.
The inanity of over fitting your design to one particular function and ignoring all others and then pretending you've achieved something significant. It really is a hallmark of this particular ideology.
The video[1] from the actual person that built it contains dramatically more info than this lazy SEO spam clickbait blog
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB52wYgEa9A