Electric Boats

[Bigplumbs]

As opposed to an articulated lorry containing 36,000 litres of petrol……

I would argue that a hydrogen leak dissipates into the atmosphere and quickly dilutes to a point where it doesn’t pose any danger.

Petrol on the other hand soaks into the surface and remains a hazard for some time.
I wonder if you remember the Buncefield depot fire in Hemel Hempstead from 2005.

Either way we currently transport petrol and LPG in industrial quantities on our roads. I don’t see hydrogen being any different.

Very good point

 

[Bigplumbs]

And this is why we make little progress

What you see as progress I see as ill informed stupidity Good to have different views of course

 

[Bigplumbs]

And this is why we make little progress

If you had Children and added to the problem you believe in then you have little right to preach to those who’s impact on the environment will be far less than theirs. Think on my friend

 

[flaming]

To be honest, all of the "it's only a drop" and other justifications for keeping the status quo rather ignore the 2 main reasons that this will not happen.

Firstly, optics. The UK government has announced that there will be no new petrol or diesel cars on the road from 2030. The reason for this is given as the CO2 emissions from cars. It does seem somewhat unlikely that the continued sale of boats that use extremely large amounts of Diesel, and therefore emit large amounts of CO2, compared to the average family car will be permitted much longer than 2030. A bit longer maybe, but at some point a non-conservative government will get in, and someone will then see "rich boat owners" as an easy target that will be popular with their base, and it would be an almost impossible position to defend for any politician, why "Rich people in yachts" can still buy big Diesel engines when Joe Blogs can't buy a petrol car.

And then there is simply fuel availability and cost. At some point after 2030 there will be a tipping point where the number of ICE cars on the road ceases to be able to support a widely dispersed network of petrol stations. At this point planning a trip with a petrol car will be rather like planning an EV trip now, having to check the availability of fuel... And this will then lead to a further collapse in demand for fuel. Oh, and all this time you can bet your last penny that the government will be ratcheting up the fuel duty with the excuse of encouraging the last few holdouts to switch to Electric.
Without the large volumes of road fuel being processed, the relatively small amounts of marine Diesel will see costs dramatically rise. Which will be further exacerbated if HGVs transition away from Diesel in a relatively short timescale.
Problems of supply could then be quite marked, and costs very high.

The future, quite plainly, is going to be one without fossil fuels. It doesn't matter if you agree with the reasons for this or not, it's happening and claiming it isn't is simply ostrichism. Adapting your hobby to suit is going to be necessary, if you plan on living long enough to see the transition.... In a way the OP is quite right that an engine only boat is not going to look the same in the future as it does now. But then the boats of a time before reliable Diesel engines looked quite different too... Times change, some lament the passing of a phase, others get on with it.

 

[vas]

really regret posting in this thread...
so you really believe the 2030 date then?
track record of governments performance and standing by their initial arguments is not for it happening before 2050 (imho)
it is going to happen, don't think anyone is disputing the fact, the when, the how and the cost is debatable though.
Unless something better than lithium and something lighter and something cheaper is going to arrive, I wouldn't hold my breath.
I'll be hopefully 96 by 2050, wont be my main concern tbh, we shall see. But 2030 it aint!

 

[Rwc13]

If you had Children and added to the problem you believe in then you have little right to preach to those who’s impact on the environment will be far less than theirs. Think on my friend

What a moronic statement. How do you know my impact on the environment is less than yours with one child to your zero? And my reference was to your selfish attitude of “I don’t need to do anything because I don’t have kids”…..just wow ?

 

[flaming]

so you really believe the 2030 date then?

Yes.

 

[Bigplumbs]

What a moronic statement. How do you know my impact on the environment is less than yours with one child to your zero? And my reference was to your selfish attitude of “I don’t need to do anything because I don’t have kids”…..just wow ?

Of course your Impact is more than a person with no Children (Kids are Baby Goats by the way) Do the Maths. And I think you have mis quoted me. Are you planning to glue yourself to the Road any time soon or are you going to go out and plant some trees and help to draft strip an old ladies bungalow as I have done.

 

[Bigplumbs]

Yes.

Oh dear

 

[Rwc13]

Of course your Impact is more than a person with no Children (Kids are Baby Goats by the way) Do the Maths. And I think you have mis quoted me. Are you planning to glue yourself to the Road any time soon or are you going to go out and plant some trees and help to draft strip an old ladies bungalow as I have done.

OK, so you must be big brother and know everything about my life, what house I live in, what energy it consumes, what cars I drive, how often I fly etc etc. Since you have clearly done the maths, perhaps you might share it with us all?

You can be environmentally conscientious without glueing yourself to a road you know. Or perhaps you don’t, and all your socialist posturing is simply that…

 

[Farmer Piles]

A whole raft of threads within this thread and I am sure that you have all been waiting with bated breath for my views.
I think that certainly in the short term and equally for domestic travel and day boating electric is the way to go. As long as the source of the electricity is clean, then the reduction in pollution and carbon output is nothing but a good thing. With the huge surge in renewable power and the nuclear power stations that with hopefully be on stream soon, this is reasonably achievable.
Certainly in the commercial world, the current batteries are no good. I have two 210hp tractors with 6.5 litre Iveco diesels, they cost about £110K each new. They will do a 10-12 hour day on a tank of fuel. The batteries to deliver this energy would cost around £450K - never mind the size and weight of them all. On that basis, for trucks, diggers, tractors, commercial and fishing boats; diesel is here to stay for the medium term.
I would have no problem with going to hydrogen. We cope with LPG and petrol is way more volatile in many ways - vapour, etc.. Use the excess power from renewables - night time, windy days - to generate hydrogen by electrolysis and it is almost a clean fuel.
Anyhow, my fourpenneth on the subject.

 

[westernman]

Mistroma.

Your calculations are quite close to my calculations - which were based on larger battery packs such as Tesla 3, Zoe etc. Indeed from a purely "energy density" angle, my figure came to battery pack being around 23.8 times (very close to your 22x) as heavy as an equivalent amount of diesel. However, you also need to allow for the weight of the diesel tank. More importantly, there is a huge difference in weight of the actual power plant - you can see one person leaning in and lifting out their 20kW / 24hp motor on a Sailing Uma video. you wont do that even with a small 25hp diesel engine!

The big constraint though is probably not the weight, but the cost of a battery pack needed to provide any sort of acceptable range - even at 4-5 knots. This is again related to the energy efficiency of diesel - the gross energy of 1 litre of diesel equates to 10kWh, and even allowing for increased efficiency of an electric drive, by my calculations 1 litre of diesel equates to a nett equivalent of circa 3kWh.
So your hypothetical 13.5kWh battery is equivalent to around 4.5 litres of diesel - or a small tender fuel tank.

So any moderately sized cabin boat (other than a riverr boat, for example) will need a much bigger battery pack - closer to the 60-100 kWh supplied in most new EV cars. This is where the cost factors (amongst others) really hit home.
Of course, for a boat used for moderate sized trips out of marinas this is quite practical today. But for longer cruising range a battery only boat EV is not yet practical - but, per the other recent thread on here, a "serial hybrid" with range extending generator (like the early BW i3's) could be an attractive option for a new build.

Serial hybrid, without the batteries used to be called diesel electric.

That has been used for the last 60 years at least in diesel electric train locomotives and also for a long time in cruise ships which have podded electric drives hanging under the hull driven by generators (I think these days they use diesel or heavy fuel engine powered generators and steam turbine generators driven off the heat recovered from the diesel/heavy fuel engines).

 

[westernman]

A whole raft of threads within this thread and I am sure that you have all been waiting with bated breath for my views.
I think that certainly in the short term and equally for domestic travel and day boating electric is the way to go. As long as the source of the electricity is clean, then the reduction in pollution and carbon output is nothing but a good thing. With the huge surge in renewable power and the nuclear power stations that with hopefully be on stream soon, this is reasonably achievable.
Certainly in the commercial world, the current batteries are no good. I have two 210hp tractors with 6.5 litre Iveco diesels, they cost about £110K each new. They will do a 10-12 hour day on a tank of fuel. The batteries to deliver this energy would cost around £450K - never mind the size and weight of them all. On that basis, for trucks, diggers, tractors, commercial and fishing boats; diesel is here to stay for the medium term.
I would have no problem with going to hydrogen. We cope with LPG and petrol is way more volatile in many ways - vapour, etc.. Use the excess power from renewables - night time, windy days - to generate hydrogen by electrolysis and it is almost a clean fuel.
Anyhow, my fourpenneth on the subject.

There are better ways more efficient ways to store energy than using electrolysis and hydrogen or using batteries.

For instance, with solar, instead of using photovoltaic panels to directly generate electricity, one way is to use low tech panels to heat molten salt. This can be reasonably efficiently stored without too much heat loss and the heat can then be used to generate steam for conventional steam turbine electricity generation.

Wind turbines can drive compressors to compress air which can be stored underground. This can be released as required to drive a turbine for electricity generation.

 

[John100156]

I have enjoyed this debate, generally well thought out comments given in good spirit, the OP too may have benefited, so I for one would like to hear their comments, as to how they might see developments taking place in the future, after all, its free advertising....!

 

[Portofino]

To be honest, all of the "it's only a drop" and other justifications for keeping the status quo rather ignore the 2 main reasons that this will not happen.

Firstly, optics. The UK government has announced that there will be no new petrol or diesel cars on the road from 2030. The reason for this is given as the CO2 emissions from cars. It does seem somewhat unlikely that the continued sale of boats that use extremely large amounts of Diesel, and therefore emit large amounts of CO2, compared to the average family car will be permitted much longer than 2030. A bit longer maybe, but at some point a non-conservative government will get in, and someone will then see "rich boat owners" as an easy target that will be popular with their base, and it would be an almost impossible position to defend for any politician, why "Rich people in yachts" can still buy big Diesel engines when Joe Blogs can't buy a petrol car.

And then there is simply fuel availability and cost. At some point after 2030 there will be a tipping point where the number of ICE cars on the road ceases to be able to support a widely dispersed network of petrol stations. At this point planning a trip with a petrol car will be rather like planning an EV trip now, having to check the availability of fuel... And this will then lead to a further collapse in demand for fuel. Oh, and all this time you can bet your last penny that the government will be ratcheting up the fuel duty with the excuse of encouraging the last few holdouts to switch to Electric.
Without the large volumes of road fuel being processed, the relatively small amounts of marine Diesel will see costs dramatically rise. Which will be further exacerbated if HGVs transition away from Diesel in a relatively short timescale.
Problems of supply could then be quite marked, and costs very high.

The future, quite plainly, is going to be one without fossil fuels. It doesn't matter if you agree with the reasons for this or not, it's happening and claiming it isn't is simply ostrichism. Adapting your hobby to suit is going to be necessary, if you plan on living long enough to see the transition.... In a way the OP is quite right that an engine only boat is not going to look the same in the future as it does now. But then the boats of a time before reliable Diesel engines looked quite different too... Times change, some lament the passing of a phase, others get on with it.

You are mixing and merging EV s
Different circumstances leisure boats .
Lets stay on the same page .

 

[dunedin]

Serial hybrid, without the batteries used to be called diesel electric.

That has been used for the last 60 years at least in diesel electric train locomotives and also for a long time in cruise ships which have podded electric drives hanging under the hull driven by generators (I think these days they use diesel or heavy fuel engine powered generators and steam turbine generators driven off the heat recovered from the diesel/heavy fuel engines).

Yes - to a degree it is just transfer of car terminology to boats. But there is one important difference between a decent “serial hybrid” boat and a traditional “diesel electric” - it’s the battery / hybrid part.

For many people, with boats as with cars, most of their voyages (journeys) are often relatively short, and so can be done with a moderate (in current EV a car terms, as in multi x 10kWh) sized battery pack, charged from shore power. The generator is used as a range extender only for the occasions when longer voyages are needed, typically at modest speeds as generator smaller output than drive max power.

 

[flaming]

You are mixing and merging EV s
Different circumstances leisure boats .
Lets stay on the same page .

Oh I completely agree that boats and cars are different.
my point though was that the people who set policy won’t see it that way.

 

[dunedin]

You are mixing and merging EV s
Different circumstances leisure boats .
Lets stay on the same page .

Actually the engine sizes / power of most cars, and associated battery sizes needed, are within the same order of magnitude for most modest sized cars cars and most modest sized boats. Clearly there are more challenges recharging mid journey if in open water - but in practice most boating is done harbour to harbour. Those like me, and some others on this forum, who spend 50% of nights at anchor or underway are quite exceptional in total boating terms.

 

[Seastoke]

What amazes me you mention politics once and you get banned , and this guy advertizes his electric boats and the mods do f all

 

[Mistroma]

What amazes me you mention politics once and you get banned , and this guy advertizes his electric boats and the mods do f all

Perhaps that was because the advert pretty much highlighted how useless the product would be to many on this forum. The people it might appeal to are not likely to do much boating. You could argue that the result barely qualified as an advert, more like a warning to consider usage very carefully before going down that route.