Orca ten Broke – Berlin’s Solar Seminar Ship

Imagine a conference room that floats, glides silently across Berlin’s lakes and runs on sunshine. That is the Orca ten Broke, a seminar ship designed to operate without fossil fuels.

The ship was built by Ostseestaal in Stralsund, the same shipyard that built Berlin’s FährBär solar ferries. It is 35.55 m long and 8.25 m wide, has a steel hull and superstructure and is licensed for 199 people. It has three decks. The lowest holds the engine room, four battery rooms and the tanks. The middle deck, 2.4 m high, contains the seminar room, which spans the full width of the ship and can be split into three rooms. On top is the sun deck with the solar modules.

A 110 kW electric motor drives the ship. Its battery of 250 kWh is charged by a 32 kW solar array on the roof. On sunny days the solar array can cover the ship’s entire energy needs. For grey days there is a generator approved for renewable paraffinic fuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil and, in future, e-fuels. It works as a combined heat and power unit, so its waste heat warms the water and the floor heating, stored in a 1,500-litre buffer tank.

Owner Felix Eisenhardt developed the energy concept by taking ideas from low-energy buildings onto the water: good insulation, multi-glazed windows, floor heating. For campers and tiny-house builders the same lesson applies: save energy first, then the sun can do the rest. Compare it with the Solarcamper and the Stella Vita.

Technical data

Photos

• Top photo: Biberbaer / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
• The Orca ten Broke moored at the Focus Teleport in Berlin-Mo… Photo: Molgreen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
• At a landing stage on the Wannsee (2026). Photo: Whgler / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

Sources

• Wikipedia (DE): Orca ten Broke