REGENT, Schneider Electric, and World4Solar Demonstrate Remote Seaglider Charging Capabilities

REGENT Craft has announced a suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion of remote charg­ing capa­bil­i­ties in part­ner­ship with Schnei­der Elec­tric and World4Solar. 

The mile­stone, which was announced on Mon­day, marks a sig­nif­i­cant step in enabling Seaglid­er oper­a­tions in loca­tions with lim­it­ed or no tra­di­tion­al grid infra­struc­ture, expand­ing the poten­tial range and flex­i­bil­i­ty of com­mer­cial and defense mis­sions. 

Through this col­lab­o­ra­tion, Schnei­der Elec­tric adapt­ed its high-pow­er charg­ing tech­nol­o­gy to inte­grate with World4Solar’s mod­u­lar bat­tery ener­gy stor­age. 

The result­ing solu­tion allows REGENT’s Seaglid­ers — high-speed, nov­el vehi­cles that oper­ate with­in a wingspan of the water’s sur­face in ground effect on an aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly effi­cient cush­ion of air – top oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly of estab­lished port infra­struc­ture.  

Bil­ly Thal­heimer, co-founder and CEO of REGENT, said: “Seaglid­ers are designed to unlock fast, effi­cient mar­itime mobil­i­ty across the world’s coastal regions, and charg­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty is a crit­i­cal part of mak­ing that vision a real­i­ty.

“Work­ing with Schnei­der Elec­tric, we’re show­ing how Seaglid­ers can oper­ate beyond tra­di­tion­al infra­struc­ture, sup­port­ing both com­mer­cial oper­a­tors and defense mis­sions in the places they’re need­ed most.”  

The demon­stra­tion showed how the ves­sels could be charged away from estab­lished ports and high-den­si­ty infra­struc­ture, enabling oper­a­tions across a broad­er set of coastal, island, and aus­tere envi­ron­ments. 

For com­mer­cial oper­a­tors, remote charg­ing can help extend Seaglid­er ser­vice to more routes and des­ti­na­tions, sup­port­ing pas­sen­ger trav­el, car­go move­ment, and off­shore logis­tics in areas where charg­ing infra­struc­ture may be lim­it­ed.

For defense cus­tomers, the capa­bil­i­ty is espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant to dis­trib­uted mar­itime oper­a­tions, where the abil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute pow­er gen­er­a­tion and stor­age in aus­tere con­di­tions can increase mis­sion endurance, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and resilience. 

The remote charg­ing con­cept uti­lizes a three-pil­lar approach: 

1. Mod­u­lar Ener­gy Stor­age: Deliv­er­ing ener­gy stor­age units to remote or tem­po­rary sites. 
2. Hard­ened Hard­ware: Adapt­ing high-pow­er charg­ing com­po­nents for off-grid mar­itime envi­ron­ments. 
3. DC-Cou­pled Archi­tec­ture: Using a direct-cur­rent (DC) archi­tec­ture to bypass the mul­ti­ple con­ver­sion stages of tra­di­tion­al AC charg­ing, sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­ing effi­cien­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty. 

Chris Evanich, Com­mer­cial Leader, Schnei­der Elec­tric, said: “Schnei­der Elec­tric is focused on enabling the future of resilient, sus­tain­able elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. Our work with REGENT demon­strates how adapt­able charg­ing solu­tions can sup­port new forms of elec­tric mobil­i­ty, includ­ing oper­a­tions in remote and infra­struc­ture-con­strained envi­ron­ments.”