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Solar Boats Are Moving From Niche Projects to a Larger Market in India: Navalt CEO Sandith Thandasherry Photograph: (AI)
India’s solar and electric boat sector is beginning to see stronger adoption, with government ferry projects, tourism applications and private orders expanding beyond the early market concentrated in Kerala. Navalt Solar and Electric Boats, which pioneered solar-electric passenger ferries in India, now has boats operating across several states and is also looking at fishing, patrol and inland cargo applications.
In an interview with Saur Energy International, Sandith Thandasherry, Founder and CEO, Navalt, spoke about the evolution of solar boats in India, the economics of electrification, the challenges in retrofitting conventional boats, government procurement, battery technology and the emerging market.
 We started our journey technically as a company in 2013, but the concept started much earlier. Our first solar-boat experiment was in 2009. We built a small boat in our garage to test whether a boat could be powered entirely by the sun and still perform like a normal boat. Solar boats were not new, but there was a perception that they were slow. We wanted to change that perception. Our boat even entered the Limca Book of Records as the fastest boat in India at that time.
However, technology and economics are two different things. In 2009, solar panels cost around ₹65,000-70,000 per kW and batteries were also very expensive. There was no government support or subsidy for electric boats. We realised that small boats would not make economic sense, so we moved towards larger, heavily utilised applications such as public transport. That led us towards the development of a solar ferry.
Kerala’s public transport problem and our technology were a good fit. The government was losing money on conventional ferries because passenger fares were subsidised while diesel costs were high. The first solar-electric ferry was a major project because there were no established Indian standards for such a vessel. We had to refer to international rules, including regulations in Norway. It took around three years to design, build and test the boat.
The ferry was delivered in 2017 and has continued operating. It has demonstrated that solar-electric boats can work as a commercially viable public-transport solution. At that time, the capital cost was higher than a conventional boat, but the fuel savings made the economics work. The additional capital expenditure of a solar-electric boat can typically be around 30-40%, but for a heavily utilised public-transport vessel, that difference can potentially be recovered through fuel savings in three to five years.
The market has changed significantly in the last four to five years. Solar-panel and battery prices have fallen, while the cost of conventional operations has increased. We have  87 boat projects, of which around 46 are currently operating. They are spread across nine states, including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. We expect to be present in around 12 states.
The market has also changed from being predominantly government-driven. In our first five years, roughly 70% of our orders were from government projects and 30% from private customers. Today, it has almost flipped, with private orders accounting for around 60% by number, although the value mix can be different. We are also exporting. Our boats have gone to Canada, and we are working on projects for Israel, Seychelles and Cyprus.
The biggest change is that the technology is now much more economically viable. Our large public-transport ferries typically get around 70% of their energy from solar and 30% from the grid. Tourism boats can have a similar or somewhat different energy mix depending on their utilisation.
Most of our boats are completely electric, with no fuel onboard. A few have gensets for emergency situations or range extension, but that is not required during normal operations.
Not every boat can be successfully retrofitted. This is an important distinction between electric cars and boats. In cars, manufacturers have already optimised the vehicle design, so changing the powertrain can work relatively well. India’s small-boat industry is different. Many boats are locally manufactured and have not undergone extensive hydrodynamic optimisation. When we started, our first objective was to reduce the energy requirement. We made the boat lighter and optimised its underwater shape.
For one 75-passenger boat, the weight was reduced from around 30-35 tonnes to about 15-17 tonnes. Through computational fluid dynamics and hull optimisation, we were able to reduce the energy requirement substantially. Then we changed the powertrain to electric and added solar energy. These three steps—better design, electric propulsion and significantsolar contribution—are what make the economics work. This is why simply taking an existing inefficient boat and putting an electric motor and batteries into it does not necessarily make economic sense.
Public transport is one of the strongest applications. Tourism is another. Small fishing boats that go out to sea and return every day are also a potential market. India has around 2.5 lakh fishing boats in this broad category. The important factor is daily utilisation and charging. If a fishing boat stays at sea for 10-15 days, the economics become difficult because the battery has to be sized for a very low utilisation cycle. Small boats that return every day are much more suitable.
Patrol boats are another interesting application. They often operate at low speed for most of their patrol, although they may need high speed occasionally. Such vessels can use electric propulsion at low speeds and diesel for high-speed requirements.
There is significant potential. We have worked on the design of a 1,000-tonne electric cargo vessel for inland waterways. The concept is based on battery swapping, with battery containers replaced at regular intervals along the route. The idea is to have charging or battery-swap infrastructure at intervals of roughly 50-100 km. This could make electric propulsion possible for large inland cargo vessels. We are trying to convince the Inland Waterways authorities that such vessels can be technically and economically viable for the NW-5 inland cargo vessels of 2000 tonne capacity.
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