Pioneering owner backs revolutionary tech

Sigfried Steiner, owner of the 44m Royal Huisman schooner Lethantia has built a fortune by adopting cutting edge technology in the film and advertising industries. Now, he’s found a power system for yachts that could do to standard generators what digital did to Kodak.

After flying me down to Marina Izola in a jet that he piloted, Sigfried Steiner brought me face to face with what could be the future of superyacht power generation.

“Capstone produces this incredibly efficient microturbine, but they’re facing too much competition on land,” Steiner told me as we stood in the engine room of his 44m Royal Huisman schooner Lethantia, which he bought in 2007. “But here, in a superyacht, it’s properties are outstanding—and they own the patent!”

Steiner—who is so impressed with the technology, he bought the worldwide maritime application rights and is about to start marketing to the superyacht industry—knows a thing or two about innovation. As the founder and creative director of Steiner Film, he has worked at the leading edge of film technology for over 40 years. He was the first person to shoot with Sony’s then-brand new High Definition digital video technology in the 1980s, when he shot a car commercial for BMW. Since the 1960s, he’s built a fortune by providing technical capabilities to his advertising clients that simply didn’t exist elsewhere.

After a bad experience of an oil slick surrounding his yacht after a windless night in a secluded bay, Steiner started thinking about the alternatives. “I own and fly my own jet, so I immediately thought of a turbine,” Steiner said. “The ones for jets aren’t right for marine purposes, but the American company Capstone has been producing these amazing turbine generators that run on an air bearing, so there’s no oil. When I started looking into it, I figured we could give it a try.”

With some good engineers he knew—Steiner seems to know a lot of technically apt people—and the full cooperation of Capstone, he modified the arrangement and housing of a 30kW unit to suit the yacht’s needs, and installed the first marine microturbine generator aboard Lethantia last fall during refit at Royal Huisman. “We’re now working on a second version, taking lessons we’ve learned on this one, and will be replacing our other generator with that new one this fall,” he said. 

With the ability to customize the arrangement of the electrical connectors and components to suit available engine room space, the MME unit seems ideally suited to refits. But it’s not hard to see how this could be a solution for hybrid and diesel electric propulsion. Capstone makes a 200kW turbine, four of which could be installed in a new-build to power hotel needs, charge a battery bank and run azipods or Voith Schneider props.

That the turbines are totally vibration-free and thus effectively silent outside the engine room, and that they burn furl so efficiently they don't require any exhaust after treatment in the form of particulate filters or catalytic reduction, and that they have millions of tested hours in operation in land-based uses, that they operate at angles that would stress a traditional diesel and that they require less maintenance than normal diesel generators are points that just slide into the chat. The case for this technology is persuasive at first glance. The Superyacht Group is looking closer at the technology, but talking with Steiner, you get the sense he sees the future—and traditional diesel generators are not in it. “Why are we using 150 year old technology aboard superyachts?” he asks.
 



Pick up the next edition of The Superyacht Report for an in-depth technical report on the MME microturbine. 

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