Rolls-Royce has been designing mtu combustion engines for over 100 years now, but can you 'go electric' at the drop of a hat?
It's not as if the whole e-issue has hit us out of the blue. We've been doing grid connection calculations for gensets for a long time now – something that calls for considerable electrical engineering skills – and diesel-electric drives have been part of our proposition for a long time in the form of mtu PowerPacks, which are underfloor railcar engines complete with generators and power transmission technology. And we've been fitting hybrid systems to yachts as well.
There's still some way to go there?
Of course there is. The trick will be to modularize our existing hybrid systems, making them easier to integrate. We want to cater for a wide range of variants, load profiles and operating conditions while minimizing the effort involved. That is not to say we're going to have a single standard product. Far from it – our aim is to develop an entire modular family which allows us to meet even special customer requirements simply and economically. Ideally, our sales engineer is going to click his way through the configurator software – I can even see a customer doing this on an app – putting together a power delivery system which triggers the corresponding production order. That is the goal we're not going to lose sight of.
So where does digitalization come into this?
Electrification offers us a vast array of new possibilities. However, to master these possibilities we have to understand how customers are going to use our new systems. Not everything can be simulated. To make our systems even more efficient, we have to collect data and focus our expertise on analyzing it properly.
Any illustrative examples of this?
Let's take battery life. We can design systems with big batteries to reduce wear and tear on the cells and make them last longer. But that's a pretty expensive option. It's more economical to use a smaller battery and make it work harder – but this lowers its lifetime. Sure, we can run simulations to see which option is preferable, but detailed operational experience is a huge help in areas like this. Analyzing past data, and using present-day knowledge to predict what's going to happen in the future – I think that's going to be the great benefit of digitalization.
Where does the diesel come into this system approach?
A system is only as good as its components, and given the power density of diesel, these engines are going to play a key part in our systems for a long time to come. We're going to continue refining our diesels, keeping them at the forefront of technology. One major part of the development work we are doing involves designing the engine proficiently into the overall system.
Is hybrid technology a stepping stone to all-electric off-highway mobility – or is it here to stay?
The term “stepping stone” is sometimes used misleadingly. It's true that a stepping stone connects two places – in this case the conventional with the electric. My prediction is that hybrids will only be a stepping stone for a few applications – a one-way bridge to all-electric power systems – for example in ferry operations. We're already seeing the first all-electric ferries in Norway. They have large battery banks and comparatively low power draws because of the short routes, and their timetables take account of the time required to charge the batteries, or swap them over. This is no longer an engineering challenge – it's more a commercial one. In practically all other applications, its feasibility is fairly borderline. Some day, we might see trains bridging unelectrified track sections using on-board electrical power only, but that will still be no general replacement for the internal combustion engine in railcars. That said, we're going to be keeping a weather eye on all the factors involved, to see if they develop along the lines we're predicting – and to see whether, perhaps, any totally different emerging technology comes along to change the ballgame.
We've been talking a lot about electrified propulsion and drive systems. What other tech do you see coming over the horizon?
There are some big developments we've got our sights on. One is alternative fuels, which are set to gradually replace diesel fossil fuel. Natural gas is just one of these, and we're also looking at synthetic fuels. They jury's still out on which one is going to win the day – be it methanol or so-called OME fuels, or maybe even something completely different. The production of such fuels – thinking of “Power-to-X” – is one issue we're looking into.
Of interest to agriculture are fuels from renewable energies, which could possibly be obtained by growing one's own. What opportunities can you see there?
We're doing studies on this. Since 2018, we have been leading the way in the government-sponsored “MethQuest” project where we are looking into producing gas, including hydrogen, from renewable energies, and using this in our engines.