This solar-powered self-driving boat is making a historic journey across the Atlantic Ocean

Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, a small autonomous boat is braving wind and waves to demonstrate the power of solar energy. Isaac Penny and Christopher Sam Soon’s Solar Voyager embarked from Boston on June 1, and they hope it will land in Portugal in October.



 Sam Soon and Penny, both engineers, began the project in 2013, with the goal of building aboat from scratch that could travel the world on its own. They aren’t the first to send an autonomous craft to sail the ocean – a 2012 Wave Glider that made the trip was powered by wave energy and financed by the company Liquid Robotics.

The engineers aren’t funded by a major company, and they built the boat themselves. Penny and Sam Soon worked on their Solar Voyager in their spare time after work. According to Penny, anyone can build a craft like they did.

The photovoltaic panels that power the Solar Voyager can generate 7 kilowatt hours (kWh) every day in the summer and 3 kWh in the winter. The boat is made from aluminum, which the engineers decided would be more resilient than the “glass reinforced plastic” used by other autonomous boats. The aluminum makes the Solar Voyager heavier and slower, but will help it resist shocks. The engineers monitor the boat through the Iridium satellite network, and can receive updated data every 15 minutes.

Penny said to TechCrunch, “We always think about solar as this alternative energy thing, but you just couldn’t do this with fossil fuels – you couldn’t build something that will run forever. Whether it’s long endurance drones, or data gathering for maritime security, or monitoring wildlife preserves – solar isn’t just an alternative form of energy, it’s the best solution. It brings something to the table that nothing else has.”

You can keep up with the Solar Voyager and see where it is in the Atlantic here. The engineers are also looking for a boat owner in Portugal who can help them collect the Solar Voyager once it makes its journey.

Chile is generating so much solar power that it’s giving it away for free

In recent years, Chile has invested so much in its solar power industry that the country is now generating more electricity from the sun than it knows what to do with. A new report reveals that spot prices on solar electricity dropped to zero for 113 days of the year through April, and many more days of free solar power are expected to come. Taking advantage of free solar power is a huge benefit for residents, but analysts are concerned about how this will impact the market, since investors and owners of solar power plants may lose money.

Solar power fed to Chile’s central grid has quadrupled in capacity since 2013. The grid is now fed by 29 solar farms, and another 15 are planned for construction in the future. But Chile has two power networks in play: a central grid and a northern grid, which are not connected. Infrastructure in some areas of each grid is poor, so there are places where the grids simply cannot transmit as much electricity. Due to the age-old principle of supply and demand, some areas have more electricity than they need, driving prices down, while other areas are under-served. In areas served by the northern part of the central grid, power surpluses have driven the price to zero, and this year’s figures are on target to meet or exceed last year’s number of free solar power days, which was 192. Simultaneously, areas under-served by the grid are experiencing higher than normal prices.

Critics are concerned about the long-term effects of the massive solar industry growth, without the necessary infrastructure updates to handle the increased capacity. As Carlos Barria, former chief of the government’s renewable energy division and a professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, in Santiago, told Bloomberg: “[President] Michelle Bachelet’s government has set the energy sector as a priority,” said Carlos Finat, president of the country’s renewable association, known as Acera. “But planning has been focused in the short term when it is necessary to have long term plans to solve these type of issues.”