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The world's largest solar-powered boat was unveiled on February 25th during an official ceremony held at the HDW Shipyard in Kiel, Germany.

After more than 13 months spent in the boatyard in the hands of Knierim Yachtbau’s boatbuilding team in Germany, PlanetSolar revealed its futuristic design and its state-of-the-art technology for the first time. Approximately two hundred people attended the official ceremony.

Named 'PlanetSolar', the 102-foot catamaran is powered exclusively by about 38,000 deck-mounted solar cells each with a 22% solar conversion efficiency. The cells were manufactured by SunPower Corporation.

The vessel is 31 metres long, 15 metres wide, 7.5 metres high and the photovoltaic solar panels cover around 500 square metres of the craft's surface.

Designed by a team of international engineers working under the direction of PlanetSolar SA of Switzerland, the vessel is expected to be the fastest solar boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the first to navigate both the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The craft is expected to begin testing later this month, about a year before a planned round-the-world journey in April 2011.

Planned stopovers for the trip include Hamburg, London, New York, San Francisco, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. The solar boat will be available for public display during each of its stops.

PlanetSolar follows in the footsteps of the smaller solar-powered 'Sun21' catamaran, which averaged 5-6 knots on its 7,000-mile trans-Atlantic voyage from the Canary Islands to New York harbor in 2007.

Speaking at the unveiling, Immo Ströher, owner of the multi-hull boat, emphasised the technological significance of the event: "Each step in the PlanetSolar project is a step further in the technological development of renewable energy sources. Thanks to ambitious projects like this, scientific research is making progress," he said.

The next milestone for PlanetSolar will be the official launch of the boat, which is expected to take place in Kiel within the next few weeks.