India’s first hydrogen fuel boat designed by Coimbatore students comes 6th in Monaco Energy Boat Challenge

It was a proud moment for India as a team of engineering students – Team Sea Sakthi — from Coimbatore’s Kumaraguru College of Technology in Tamil Nadu, proved their inventive abilities, determination and spirit of adventure. Competing in the 10th edition of the prestigious Monaco Energy Boat Challenge-2023 in the country’s first hydrogen powered energy boat designed and built by them called Yali 2.0 to come sixth.

Yali 2.0, India’s first hydrogen powered energy boat is the first of its kind. The students designed the indigenous custom built propulsion system on their own for this vessel to suit their requirements for the race. The aim of TSS was to develop a sustainable and efficient marine vehicle.

The cockpit of Yali 2.0 is fabricated with carbon fibre and it has a pre-set primary energy source of 8.4kWh Lithium ion battery, 2kW fuel cell and solar panel of 400W as secondary energy source.

TSS won the Communication Prize and secured 6th position in the event. Incidentally, last year too, this team won the Communication Prize.

While becoming the 6th team in the overall ranking, the team also received the Monaco Town Hall Cup. In all there were 17 teams from 10 countries in this 7-day competition which started on July 2 and ended on July 8 and took place in Monaco City, Europe. The other participating countries were Italy, Canada, Dubai, Indonesia, Netherlands, France, Portuguese, Germany, the USA, and Greece.

The 10-member student team competing in Yali 2.0 cleared the technical inspection to take qualifying laps to finish sixth. In the endurance race, the team came 5th after completing 16 laps.  In the Slalom race the team came 8th and in the championship race it got 6th position. The cumulative result of all these events helped the team to get the sixth position.

Last year TSS competed against 16 teams in India’s first energy boat named Yali whose power sources were battery and solar panel and came sixth.

The journey of TSS started with engineering students from varied streams coming together at KCT Garage, which is a student-empowered technical forum incubated in the institution.

The MEBC event is organised by Yacht Club De Monaco which promotes green innovation in the yachting industry and fosters e-mobility in the marine sector, encouraging students and researchers to build boats which are sustainable and have zero-emission propulsion.