The WHISPER consortium has reached a scientific milestone with the publication of its peer-reviewed paper, “WHISPER Project: Energy Transition from Wind and Solar Energy,” in the Journal of Sailing Technology published by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME).
Authored by Fabio Pili and Thibaut Tincelin of Stirling Design International (SDI), Romain Grandsart of OceanWings, and Jure Rogelja of Marfin Management, the paper provides the most comprehensive technical presentation to date of the project’s merchant-ship design innovations.
The study demonstrates that wind-assisted and solar technologies can deliver substantial efficiency gains on both newbuild and retrofit merchant vessels, with a new design of Panamax bulk carriers achieving up to 30 % power savings with a six tiltable wingsail configuration and container feeders showing up to 10% savings with a twin liftable wingsail configuration. This study considers the integration of the last generation of rigid wing sails of 363 m² per unit developed by Oceanwings. They are planned to be fitted in 2026 for the first time onto Ant Topic’s fleet, supervised by Marfin Management.
These outcomes highlight viable design pathways that balance fuel reduction with operational and cargo-capacity constraints. As the project advances, upcoming sea trials, detailed CAPEX/OPEX assessments, and regulatory impact evaluations under FuelEU Maritime and the ETS will be critical to validating performance, clarifying financial implications, and refining weather-routing strategies to maximise the technologies’ long-term potential.