The SiyaHamba Solar Boat is the ‘first of its kind’ in South Africa and, to our knowledge, the first in the Africa. It was built to compete in solar boat challenges such as the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge (MEBC).
Challenges such as MEBC has been established to promote renewable energy and innovation as alternatives to keep our oceans and environment clean providing mainly university teams from all over the world the opportunity to compete and showcase their design, innovation, technological and sporting strengths in a world class international renewable energy boat racing event.
Our main objective competing would be to innovate and learn and to inspire fellow Durban University of Technology (DUT) students and the South African industry, in particular the Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) industry. This could possibly be the first participation from Africa. This project will give team members the opportunity to build something unique. There are not many opportunities for students to work on a project so good as a solar-powered boat. It allows students to a high level of creative and engineering freedom and allows them to apply this knowledge to build a hands-on project from start-up.
The SiyaHamba Solar Boat has an overall length of 5.5 meters, width of 2.4 meters and height of 1.2 meters. The main body is made from a carbon fibre composite structure reinforced with aluminium. The estimated overall weight is 100 kilograms. We have a PV array of 1.3 Kilowatts to charge a 1.46 Kilowatt hour battery bank in order to power our 4 Kilowatt Torqeedo electric motor.
