Candela’s electric flying ferries to connect Thailand’s island paradise
Swedish electric boat maker Candela has just secured a major deal in Southeast Asia: ten of its P-12 electric hydrofoil ferries will soon operate the route to Koh Kood, one of Thailand’s most pristine and least developed islands.
The agreement, signed in Bangkok during the SX Sustainability Expo, pairs Candela with Thai operator Seudamgo by Leopard Transportation Co., Ltd. It marks a significant shift for Koh Kood, where access has long relied on noisy, gas-powered speedboats that pump out emissions, churn up damaging wakes, and clash with the quiet, natural character of the island. Local officials and Swedish representatives, including the Governor of Trat and the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok, were on hand to witness the deal.
Candela’s P-12 ferries promise to transform that experience. Unlike traditional hulls that plow through waves, the P-12 rides above the surface on computer-controlled hydrofoils. The result is a ride that’s not only whisper-quiet but also dramatically more efficient – using up to 80% less energy than a conventional speedboat. With no exhaust fumes, no underwater noise, and virtually no wake, the P-12 is designed to leave the island’s marine environment undisturbed.
Each of the ten ferries headed to Thailand will be the Business model, offering seating for 20 passengers in an air-conditioned cabin with plenty of luggage space. At a service speed of 25 knots (around 29 mph or 46 km/h), they’ll cover the 20-nautical-mile mainland-to-island route in just 40 minutes. The vessels are powered by dual Candela C-Pod drives rated at 110 kW continuous (160 kW peak), fed by a 378 kWh battery pack that can fast-charge at up to 300 kW. Real-world range comes in at about 40 nautical miles at cruising speed – more than enough to comfortably cover the daily runs. And with that fast charging, a feature that has helped Candela set maritime records, the ferries can easily top up their batteries while loading and unloading passengers.
Seudamgo’s CEO Surachai Suwanthanakul called the deal a milestone for Thai tourism. “Candela’s P-12 foil electric technology is a game-changer,” he said. “It’s free from emissions, oil spills, and underwater noise—and at the same time, it offers passengers a superior experience. You can’t really get seasick on board a Candela.”
For passengers, that seasickness-free ride is thanks to Candela’s digital Flight control system, a computer that constantly adjusts the hydrofoils in real time to eliminate slamming and pitching. It’s the same tech that’s made Candela’s smaller leisure boats popular with private owners in Europe and the U.S., now scaled up for public transit.
And as someone who has spent some time at the helm of multiple Candela leisure boats and also suffers from seasickness, this journalist can confirm that the smooth ride really is calming for the stomach.
Candela’s founder and CEO Gustav Hasselskog framed the partnership as a chance for Thailand to leapfrog straight into sustainable water transport. “By replacing noisy, polluting speedboats with our electric flying ships, Seudamgo is protecting one of Thailand’s most beautiful destinations,” he said.
Thailand is already a major market for Candela. The company operates its largest office outside Sweden in Bangkok and sees huge potential in a country with more than 1,500 islands and extensive waterborne transport. Regional CEO Björn Antonsson emphasized that point: “With its thousands of islands, big rivers and vibrant tourism industry, Thailand can truly benefit from our technology. Partnering with Seudamgo to introduce the P-12 fleet is a fantastic beginning—we see enormous potential to expand clean, efficient hydrofoil transport across Thailand and the wider region.”
For Koh Kood, the arrival of Candela’s P-12 ferries could mean a future where visitors still enjoy easy access, but without the pollution and disruption that have plagued other tourist islands. And for the wider region, it’s a sign that electric flying ferries may finally be moving from niche novelty to mainstream solution.
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A worker repairs a power line in Austin, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2021.
Thomas Ryan Allison | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The rapid expansion of data centers in Texas is driving electricity demand higher during the winter, compounding the risk of supply shortfalls that could lead to blackouts during freezing temperatures.
The Lone Star state is attracting a huge amount of data center requests, driven by its abundant renewable energy and natural gas resources as well as its business friendly environment. OpenAI, for example, is developing its flagship Stargate campus in Abilene, about 150 miles west of Dallas-Forth Worth. The campus could require up to 1.2 gigawatts of power, the equivalent of a large nuclear plant.
The North American Electric Relibaility Corporation warned this week that data centers’ round-the-clock energy consumption will make it more difficult to sustain sufficient electricity supply under extreme demand conditions during freezing temperatures like catastropic Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
“Strong load growth from new data centers and other large industrial end users is driving higher winter electricity demand forecasts and contributing to continued risk of supply shortfalls,” NERC said of Texas in an analysis published Tuesday. Texas faces elevated risk during extreme winter weather, but the state’s grid is reliable during normal peak demand, NERC said.
During Uri, demand spiked for home heating in response to the freezing temperatures at the same time power plants failed in large numbers due to the same weather. Texas grid operator ERCOT ordered 20 gigawatts of rolling blackouts to prevent the system from collapsing, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report. The majority of the power plants went offline ran on natural gas.
It was the “largest manually controlled load shedding event in U.S. history” resulting 4.5 million people losing power for several days. At least 210 people died during the storm. Most of the fatalities were connected to the outages and included cases of hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and medical conditions exacerbated by freezing termperatures, according to FERC.
Data center requests surge
In the years since Uri, Texas has received a staggering amount of requests from data centers, crypto mining facilities and industrial customers seeking a grid conenction. More than 220 gigawatts of projects have requested connection as of this month, a 170% increase over the 83 gigawatts of project requests back in January, according to data published Wednesday by ERCOT.
About 73% of the projects requesting connection are data centers, according to ERCOT.
If all of those projects were actually built, they would be equivalent to the average annual power consumption of nearly 154 million homes in Texas, according to a CNBC analysis based on 2024 household electricity data. But the Lone Star state only has a population of about 30 million people.
Beth Garza, a former head of ERCOT’s watchdog, said she is very skeptical these projects will all get built, describing the scale of the numbers as “crazy big.” More than half the projects have not submitted planning studies, according to ERCOT.
“There’s not enough stuff to serve that much load on the equipment side or the consumption side,” said Garza, who served as director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor from 2014 through 2019. “There’s just so much stuff in the world to make those kinds of numbers work.”
Phantom data centers are showing up in grid connection requests across the U.S. as developers shop the same projects around to mutliple jurisdictions, said John Moura, the director of NERC’s reliability assessments. This makes it difficult for utilities to forecast future demand conditions.
Reliability at risk
The projects that ERCOT has approved to actually connect to the grid is much smaller at 7.5 gigawatts, but this is still a subsantial amount of new demand. By comparison, the six county region in southeastern Pennsylvania that includes Philadelphia, with a population of 1.7 million people, had a peak demand of about 8.6 gigwatts in 2024, according to the state utility board.
Texas’ supply and demand balance can become tight during winter and potentially fall into deficit. The state has 92.6 gigawatts of available resources and peak demand in an extreme Uri-like scenario could reach about 85.3 gigawatts, according to NERC.
But avalaible power could fall to around 69.7 gigawatts in extreme winter weather, leaving a supply deficit of more than 15 gigawatts. This is due to typical power plant maintainence and forced plant outages as well as reductions in power capacity due to winter conditions.
“What’s important to understand is the tightness we’re seeing,” Moura said. NERC’s winter assessment only included data center facilities that have reached certain milestones to filter out speculative projects, he said.
“I can’t stress enough how much of a monumental change this is for the electric industry,” Moura said of the data center requests. One solution is for data centers to show flexibility in their electricity consumption to help keep demand and supply in balance during extreme winter scenarios, he said.
In the case of Uri, natural gas plants made up 58% of all the unplanned outages in Texas, according to FERC. Freezing tempartures reduced gas production, led to challenges delivering fuel and problems transmitting electricity as power lines fell.
Texas has adopted rules to harden natural gas infrastructure for extreme winters in the wake of the storm.
When gas plants go out in such a large way, solar and battery storage also face challenges, according to NERC. Peak demand in winter is in the early morning hours when sunlight is lower and batteries may not have had enough time recharge, Moura said.
With data centers running around the clock, “maintaining sufficient battery state of charge will become increasingly challenging for extended periods of high loads, such as a severe multi-day storm like Winter Storm Uri,” NERC said in its analysis.
“Power shortfalls and rolling outages really could happen in the next few years in certain regions” of the U.S. as demand from facilities like data centers outstrips supply, said Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies. “Those are unacceptable to everybody in the United States.”
Garza said she’s confident that the reliable demand from data centers will bring new supply. “Plants love that kind of of opportunity,” she said. “My expectation is that then attracts additional private capital investment to meet those supply needs.”
Environment
Activist Ananym Capital sees upside if Baker Hughes spins off its oilfield services business
First Solar just cut the ribbon on a huge new factory in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, and it dwarfs the New Orleans Superdome. The company’s $1.1 billion, fully vertically integrated facility spans 2.4 million square feet, or about 11 times the size of the stadium’s main arena.
The factory began production quietly in July, a few months ahead of schedule, and employs more than 700 people. First Solar expects that number to hit 826 by the end of the year. Once it’s fully online, the site will add 3.5 GW of annual manufacturing capacity. That brings the company’s total US footprint to 14 GW in 2026 and 17.7 GW in 2027, when its newly announced South Carolina plant is anticipated to come online.
The Louisiana plant produces First Solar’s Series 7 modules using US-made materials — glass from Illinois and Ohio, and steel from Mississippi, which is fabricated into backrails in Louisiana.
The new factory leans heavily on AI, from computer vision that spots defects on the line to deep learning tools that help technicians make real‑time adjustments.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry says the investment is already a win for the region, bringing in “hundreds of good-paying jobs and new opportunities for Louisiana workers and businesses.” A new economic impact analysis from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette projects that the factory will boost Iberia Parish’s GDP by 4.4% in its first full year at capacity. The average manufacturing compensation package comes in at around $90,000, more than triple the parish’s per capita income.
First Solar CEO Mark Widmar framed the new facility as a major step for US clean energy manufacturing: “By competitively producing energy technology in America with American materials, while creating American jobs, we’re demonstrating that US reindustrialization isn’t just a thesis, it’s an operating reality.”
This site joins what’s already the largest solar manufacturing and R&D footprint in the Western Hemisphere: three factories in Ohio, one in Alabama, and R&D centers in Ohio and California. Just last week, First Solar announced a new production line in Gaffney, South Carolina, to onshore more Series 6 module work. By the end of 2026, the company expects to directly employ more than 5,500 people across the US.
Read more: First Solar pours $330M into a new South Carolina solar factory
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