Joe Burgard

Joseph Burgard is the Managing Director and a Partner at the Red and White Fleet, a passenger vessel company in San Francisco, CA. Mr. Burgard has been a licensed Captain since 1993 and has served in the passenger vessel industry in many operational roles over the past 35 years. Throughout his career, Mr. Burgard has led or been involved in numerous alternative fuel and emissions control projects, most recently directing the acquisition of a new build 600 passenger plug-in hybrid electric vessel and as a cofounder in Zero Emission Industries which initiated the first hydrogen fuel cell vessel project in the US. Mr. Burgard is a graduate of University of California, Irvine and has a Master’s of Arts from San Francisco State University.

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Presentation

The realities of building and operating a hybrid/electric vessel

This two-part extended presentation will take attendees through the process of planning, budgeting, specifying and building an electric vessel, and then the realities of operating one. In the first part, Ron Wille, president and COO of All American Marine, a leading manufacturer of vessels with hybrid-electric propulsion systems, will guide attendees through the major considerations: Assessing your current infrastructure and what you might need to upgrade it, the budgetary realities of building a hybrid versus diesel powered vessel, and the importance of being able to have an open dialogue with your chosen shipyard to convey your operational priorities. Having put the plan in place, the presentation will then look at specifying your vessel, how to consider the various architectures available and the role and selection of the integrator best suited to your needs. The presentation will then emphasize the most important piece of information a designer and shipyard can get: an accurate load profile and the problems and huge potential costs that may arise from inaccurate assessment. This first part of the presentation will conclude with a review of the various ESS (energy storage system) solutions. Part two of the presentation will be given by Joe Burgard, president at Red and White Fleet, a sightseeing and charter tour company operating in the San Francisco Bay Area of California for over 130 years. In 2018 the company added the first aluminum-hulled, lithium-ion battery plug-in hybrid vessel built in the USA to its fleet. Now in operation for five years, Enhydra allows Joe to present the realities of that operation, give a case study of the real-world ROI, help attendees understand the routine maintenance items and, most valuably of all, explain what changes that operating experience would lead to if Red and White were to start planning another such vessel.