MF ''Tycho Brahe'' is a Danish battery-electric car-ferry owned by

Øresundslinjen Øresundslinjen () is a ferry company serving the route between Helsingborg, Sweden and Helsingør, Denmark. Until 2018 the company was called HH-Ferries Group, and the trading name Scandlines was used. From 2018 to 2023 the name "ForSea Ferries" ...

that operates on the

HH Ferry route HH may refer to: Organizations * HH Electronics, a British amplifier manufacturer * Happy Hippie Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Miley Cyrus * Hartmann House Preparatory School, an independent preparatory school in Harare, Zi ...

. It has been in use since 1991. The ship is bidirectional, which means it can change direction without turning around, so no time is lost for this. The ship is also able to accelerate and decelerate quite quickly to and from her maximum speed of 14 knots. The ship is named after the Danish astronomer

Tycho Brahe Tycho Brahe ( ; ; born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, ; 14 December 154624 October 1601), generally called Tycho for short, was a Danish astronomer of the Renaissance, known for his comprehensive and unprecedentedly accurate astronomical observations. He ...

. MF ''Tycho Brahe'' was built by Langsten Slip & Båtbyggeri in

Tomrefjord Tomrefjord is a village located in Vestnes Municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located just south of the village of Vik at the end of the Tomrefjorden. The village of Fiksdalen lies to the northwest. The village has a po ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The ship is owned and operated by

. Between 1991 and 1997, ''Tycho Brahe'' was owned by DSB Rederi. The ferry can carry 1250 passengers, and either 260 trucks, 240 cars or 9 passenger train coaches at one time. It was built with three railtracks inside, with a total length of 266 meters.

Conversion to electric

''Tycho Brahe'' has a sister ship, . The two ships were originally diesel-powered, but were converted in 2017 to full

electric propulsion Spacecraft electric propulsion (or just electric propulsion) is a type of spacecraft propulsion technique that uses electrostatic or electromagnetic fields to accelerate mass to high speed and thus generating thrust to modify the velocity of a ...

. Each ship has a 4

MWh A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units, which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a commo ...

battery, weighing 57 metric tonnes, located at the top of the ferry between the chimneys. The batteries are recharged from land by a robot arm when docked, at 10.5 M W (10.5 k V, 600 A) for 6 minutes in Denmark and 9 minutes in Sweden. Each trip uses about 1,175 kWh and is scheduled to last 20 minutes similarly to the diesel ferries. Two of the four Wärtsilä-Vasa 6R32E diesel engines have been removed from each ship, with the other two as a backup system, not for daily operation. Main specifications: * Length: 111 m/364 ft 2 in * Beam: 28,2 m/92 ft 6 in * Draft: 5,7 m/18 ft 8 in * Tonnage: 12000 gt * Machinery: 4 thrusters of 1.5 MW each, 4.1 MWh

Li-ion A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery that uses the reversible intercalation of Li+ ions into electronically conducting solids to store energy. Li-ion batteries are characterized by higher specific energy, energy d ...

batteries. Backup system: two-shaft, diesel, 3350 hp File:Skåne 2018-07-20 (29537047857).jpg, ''Tycho Brahe'' in 2018 File:Battericontainrar Tycho Brahe.jpg, Batteries on top File:20190531 Fersea Tycho Brahe Helsingor 0120 (47981263576).jpg, ''Tycho Brahe'' in 2019

Gallery

Image:MF Tycho Brahe.jpg Image:MF Tycho Brahe (2).jpg Image:Tycho Brahe Robotic Charging System.jpg

References

* The Encyclopedia of ships. General editor: Tony Gibbons. Silverdale books, 2002, . Page 216.

External links

M/F Tycho BraheForsea ferriesFully charged show on electric ferriesElectrek: Two massive ferries are about to become the biggest all-electric ships in the world
Ferries of Sweden Ferries of Denmark 1991 ships Train ferries {{ferry-stub