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WHERE WE ARE NOW
The design of the Tig Rig retrofit sail system was originally focused on the square rigged sail design. The hull mounting was always a feature since the design ethos was ‘lots of little’. However it has only been since the recognition of the need for a standardised, modular wind propulsion system (WPS) mounting system that the mounting itself has become our main focus going forward.
Very briefly, at the time of writing in early 2026 according to the International Windship Association (IWSA) figures there are 96 vessels with wind propulsion systems (WPS) installed and a further ten that are WPS ready. The existing order books suggest that in 12 months time the numbers will have risen to 120 – 160 vessels WPS equipped. This is consistent with the annual doubling of installation that WPS has seen over the last few years.
However the challenge is going to come at the tipping point. This is the point at which the shipping industry comes to recognise that wind power is a necessity rather than an option. At that point the challenge will be how to scale installation up to the 40,000 flat decked vessels in the global fleet.
It will not be possible to achieve this without some form of standardised, modular mounting system, a universal infrastructure equivalent to a standardised rail gauge for trains. At the moment the Tig Rig is the only such system that has been developed. On this website the RINA/IWSA Oct 2024 Mass Deployment paper page goes into the challenges of scaling in more detail.
IMMEDIATE PLAN
The key feature of the wind tunnel testing/routing analysis conducted in 2015/16 detailed on The Tig Rig Sail System: performance data page shows that the 19 unit Tig Rig array on a 200m, 64,000DWT vessel delivered 4%-8% average thrust savings at 12knots. The 8% figures are for the prime wind routes North Atlantic and North Pacific while the 4% was for the MEPC 62/INF.34 recognised global shipping routes.
These figures are for an amateur design of a very simple 230m2 roller blind sail. Despite this the thrust savings figures are competitive with the best current professional WPS designs. This is because the Tig Rig delivers 19 x 230 = 4,370m2 of sail/lift area. This compares with the professionally designed, deck mounted WPS that offer 2-3 times less sail/lift. So although the necessarily shorter and smaller Tig Rig units are operating in ‘dirtier’ air the system delivers competitive thrust savings.
The argument we are making is that with 19 shorter/smaller versions of the professionally designed WPS devices mounted on the Tig Rig the thrust figures would immediately shift to a different order of magnitude. If this improvement were anywhere from 1.5x to 2.5x better then the figures would become impossible for shipping companies to ignore.
The immediate plan is to conduct computer simulation studies to indicate what these improvements will look like.
A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The text up to now has focused on thrust. The key function of transport is moving mass. In terms of emissions reductions/decarbonisation the critical metric is the movement of mass with the lowest emissions of CO2/green house gases (GHG). This is the fundamental scientific/societal/planetary issue. >The business metrics of transport and shipping in particular are not so straightforward. Carbon does not appear on business balance sheets and so are not woven into business calculus. Businesses have to be obliged to make changes as a result of governmental/regulatory dictat or else through customer pressure. Since decarbonisation is a global problem the major difficulty is getting international governmental/regulatory agreement.
The policies of different are politically driven and as a consequence governments can and do change their views on this issue.In addition there are various historical geo strategic reasons why governments have and continue to subsidise fossil fuel extraction/production. The estimates of the overall subsidy amounts to between $200 and $300/tonne of oil or gas equivalent. This works out at around $30-$40/barrel. There is a table on the ROI/Subsidy page on this website which goes into this in more detail.
WPS has the huge advantage of making use of power delivered free at the point of use. This means that WPS doesn’t have to carry its own energy source/fuel. Looking at thrust metrics, using the 2016 installation of two Norsepower Flettner rotors on the Maersk Pelican tanker the rotors were 9x more thrust effective per kg of mass than the hydrocarbon fuel.
In terms of full lifecycle carbon efficiency they are 2x as carbon efficient than the hydrocarbon propulsion system. They also save 30x their own mass of CO2 emissions every year they are installed. The detailed of how these figures were derived is available on the Business vs Science metrics page on this site.
These 9x, 2x and 30x multiples are scientifically credible numbers but, in formal terms, they don’t mean anything to businesses because carbon is not on company balance sheets. Our socioeconomic world is one in which this major institutional class is not geared to addressing the imperative scientific/societal issues we are facing. This is a serious problem.
MASS PRODUCTION
The figures on the ROI/Subsidy page include estimates for how much the costs of production and installation of WPS will fall as the technology matures and mass production savings kick into the supply chain. Broadly this should deliver around 40% total supply/install savings. In addition, following the logic outlined in the RINA/IWSA Oct 2024 Mass Deployment paper, mass deployment will see a split in costs between the ship owners, who will fund the mountings and the operators who will buy/lease/rent the WPS units on a plug and play basis.
Overall, if we see the withering of fossil fuel subsidies together with the growth of mass production savings the financial yields of WPS expenditure will rise and ROI’s will shorten.
WPS – THE LOGICAL NEXT STEP?
The incentives of cargo owners, end using customers/voters and still rather regrettably marginal business pressure, are driving ship owners/operators to address decarbonisation to a degree. We can look at what logical retrofit steps confront owners in terms of cost benefits. The table below illustrates these steps.
| Item | Cost/vessel | Savings | |
| 1) | Bow bulb* | $1m | 3% – 8% |
| 2) | Propeller improvements* | $1m | 3% – 8% |
| 3) | Hull lubrication | $2m | 3% – 4% |
| 4) | WPS | $4m | 4% – 8%† |
| 5) | New/alt fuels engine | $10m | |
| 6) | New vessel | $60m-$100m |
* – most vessels under 10 years old will already have these
† – >plus the costs will be shared with operators if standardised mountings are adopted
DISRUPTIVE COLLABORATION
Until these large framed issues of subsidies etc retreat, the argument has to be made for ways to work around the systemic lack of incentive to invest in WPS. Beyond that, the challenge of scaling indicates a need for standardised, modular systems. To be effective the mounting systems have to be monopolies, equivalent to the way that a standardised rail gauge has to universally adopted.
The difference is that at the dawn of the rail age only the land had to be bought and each rail company could apply the gauge. By contrast the ships are already owned and each company would have an incentive to establish their own standard mounting, each WPS supplier would be seeking to establish their own standard mounting.
In this environment of existing ownership the only way to incentivise universal adoption is to make sure every stakeholder owns a slice of the IP. This monopoly must be collectively owned by the stakeholders and by the customers in particular.
This business model is the outline of the proposed disruptive collaborative entity that we belive is going to have to be adopted for mass WPS deployment to be possible.
This is detailed on the Disruptive Collaborative Entity page on this site.