Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:08:43 +0000

by David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Ferries plying the San Francisco Bay in the future could be equipped with sails to slash the amount of fuel they consume, if Jay Gardner has his way.

Gardner co-owns a small startup, based in Napa, that plans to build ferries with tall, solid sails, using the bay’s strong winds to help haul commuters across the waves.

The sails, made of carbon composite materials, would more closely resemble aircraft wings than the canvas rigging of standard sailboats. They wouldn’t eliminate the need for an engine.

They could, however, cut each ferry’s fuel use by at least 40 percent, said Gardner, with Wind+Wing Technologies.

“Especially with the Bay Area and the amount of wind we have, it’s something that really clicks with people,” Gardner said. “Once you get past the initial resistance and start showing them the studies we’ve developed, the light comes on.”

He and his partners at Wind+Wing already run a 18-year-old company called Adventure Cat Sailing Charters that takes tourists on catamaran cruises around the bay.

Many ferries burn 70 gallons of diesel per hour, or more, giving ferry companies and transportation districts a big incentive to try more efficient designs. Gardner has presented his plans to three of the local ferry operators, and they’ve expressed interest.

“We’re excited about it,” said Carolyn Horgan, vice president of operations for Blue & Gold Fleet, which runs 14 ferries and tourist boats on the bay. “If someone wants to come to us with a fuel-saving technology, we’ll take a look at it.”

Gardner has signed up noted boating engineers Morrelli & Melvin Design & Engineering of Huntington Beach (Orange County) to work on the vessel’s design. He is negotiating financing for the project, although he won’t say with whom. Building the “wind-assisted” ferry could cost between $3 million and $9 million.

Read more about the Morrelli & Melvin-designed ferries at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/16/BU051BVNKL.DTL

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by Alice AgoginocloseAuthor: Alice Agogino Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity. She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology. Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (326) · February 17th, 2010 · Add a Comment