The Oceanvolt SD electric motor system has been chosen by SAIL Magazine as the winner of the 2013 Pittman Innovation Award in the Systems category. The award is given every year to recognize the most innovative and interesting new products on the market.
According to the judges “Electric motors have been married to sail drive legs before, but Finland’s Oceanvolt incorporates a number of features in its well-designed SD8.6 and SD15 units that clearly bring them to the head of the pack. With closed-circulation liquid cooling and a compact waterproof permanent-magnet motor, the drives take up very little space inside a hull. The combination shift/throttle lever is also compact and has a series of LEDs indicating motor status. Best of all, a button on the display unit engages a most interesting SD function—regeneration with a folding prop, whereby the propeller is brought up to speed until its blades are deployed, and the power is then extracted as the blades are carefully controlled so that they don’t fold back down again.”
Read more about the Pittman Innovation Award 2013 here.