Armies, Maersk, MSC and Petrobras use wind turbines on their ships. A rooftop asks a turbine to work. A ship asks it to survive — salt, vibration, permanent motion, and months between service visits. This is what a vessel demands of a wind turbine that a house never does, and what we publish so that a fleet engineer can check us.
Why a ship wants a wind turbine at all.
A ship at anchor still has a hotel load: lighting, navigation electronics, communications, pumps, battery banks that must not go flat. That load is normally carried by a diesel generator idling for hours at a fraction of its rating, which is the least efficient thing a diesel can do. A small wind turbine feeding the battery bank takes hours off the generator, and every hour off the generator is fuel not burned and maintenance not booked.
Under way, the physics get better, not worse. The rotor does not see the true wind; it sees the apparent wind, which is the true wind plus the ship’s own motion. A vessel making 12 knots into a 10-knot headwind puts roughly 22 knots — about 11 m/s — across the rotor. On our published curve that is close to the 960 W we quote at 12 m/s, from a breeze that on land would barely turn a flag.
That is why the same machine we sell for a farmhouse roof ends up on a supply vessel, a patrol boat, a survey ship or a platform tender. The load is the same shape — a battery bank that must stay up — and the wind is more reliable at sea than almost anywhere on land.
What the sea does to a machine.
Salt is the first enemy. Spray reaches every surface, dries, and leaves a conductive crust that finds its way into anything that is not sealed. The second is vibration: a ship’s structure hums at the engine’s frequency for weeks at a time, and a fastener that would hold for twenty years on a chimney will walk loose in a season on a mast. The third is motion itself. The turbine is never level, the wind never comes from one direction for long, and the rotor is asked to start, stop and yaw thousands of times more often than it would on land.
A turbine that goes to sea therefore needs a body that does not corrode, fasteners that do not loosen, a generator that is sealed rather than merely covered, an electrical brake that can hold the rotor in a gale, and a blade set chosen for the worst wind rather than the average one. Our High-Wind blade set runs 5–35 m/s on six blades with a smaller swept area, and that is the set we recommend for anything that lives on the water.
None of that is exotic. It is the ordinary discipline of building for the wrong conditions on purpose, and it is the same discipline that keeps a rooftop machine alive through a coastal winter.
What a fleet asks before it buys.
A homeowner asks what a turbine does. A shipping line, an oil major or a navy asks how you know. Every figure has to arrive attached to a standard, a test or a document with a number on it, and a fleet engineer is not going to take our word for a power curve. The useful thing about being asked is that it forces a supplier to separate what it can evidence from what it merely believes.
| Specification | What we publish | Why a ship asks |
|---|---|---|
| Motor rating | 15 kW continuous, 4.5 kW peak system output | Runs cold at typical loads; thermal margin at sea |
| Insulation grade | Class 200 °C wire, IEC 60317-13 GR 2 | Continuous operation in a hot engine-room air stream |
| Blade ranges | Low 2–20 m/s, Moderate 4–25 m/s, High 5–35 m/s | Survive the storm, not flatter the mean |
| Certification | CE and UL | Electrical safety and flag-state acceptance |
| Country of manufacture | Designed and manufactured in Europe | Supply chain and audit trail |
| Traceability | Every carton labelled, not the pallet | Warranty and replacement by individual unit, ship by ship |
Each line is a published specification with a source, not an adjective. That is the only kind of claim a fleet buyer can act on, and the only kind we are willing to make.
The curve, and what it assumes.
The Atlas reaches 4.5 kW peak system output with the High-Wind blade set. The published curve is 290 W at 8 m/s, 960 W at 12 m/s, 1.85 kW at 15 m/s, 2.15 kW at 18 m/s, 3.8 kW at 25 m/s and 4.5 kW at 35 m/s. It is quoted at the standard air density of 1.225 kg/m³, sea level and 15 °C — which, for once, is exactly where a ship lives. A cold sea will beat the figure slightly, because cold air is denser. A tropical one will fall a little short.
The published 2 m/s start-up speed is a fair-weather number. Bearing grease stiffens as it cools, and a still, freezing morning on deck will want more than that to break the rotor away from standstill. We say so because a fleet engineer will find out anyway, and we would rather be the ones who told them.
A rooftop asks a turbine to work. A ship asks it to survive. We build for the second, and sell it to both.
What this page is not.
It is not a statement by anybody but us. The customers named above are our own account of our commercial relationships; none of them has reviewed this page, approved it, or endorsed TESUP, and armed forces do not endorse commercial products as a matter of policy. No vessel, unit, order, installation or contract is named or described here, and we have not reproduced anyone’s seal or insignia.
The ship photographs at the top of this page are licensed stock images. The photograph of warships within the article is a public-domain image released by the US Navy; its appearance does not imply or constitute endorsement by the US Navy, the US government or any armed service. None of the photographs depicts any customer installation, vessel under contract, or personnel of ours.
A homeowner asks what it does.
A fleet asks how you know.
Every figure on this page has a source, and the source is our own product page.
The 15 kW continuous motor rating, the 4.5 kW peak system output, the power-curve figures, the 2 m/s start-up speed, the three blade ranges, the Class 200 °C wire grade (IEC 60317-13 GR 2), the CE and UL certification, the European manufacture and the per-unit labelling are our own published product-page specifications and can be read there. The apparent-wind example is arithmetic: 12 knots of ship speed plus 10 knots of headwind is 22 knots, or about 11.3 m/s. The air-density figures are from the International Standard Atmosphere. The customers named in the opening line are our own account of our commercial relationships and not a statement made by, or on behalf of, those companies or any armed service. Header photographs: licensed via Adobe Stock. Warship photograph within the article: US Navy, public domain (070318-N-HX866-077).