How much longer will sales of boats with internal combustion engines be allowed?

[MarkCX]

Oceanvolt think that for roughly the same HP, you can get 20nm range from 7.6kWh of battery. So I guess you'd need a bit more solar.

which is just 3600 days of average output from your panels.

As I thought. Not going to be happening anytime soon for me ?

 

[Resolution]

Really interesting stuff, thanks.

Keep it coming.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I was just looking at this electric car, and the literature was talking about the ban in sales in 2035 (proposed) and it got me thinking about boats. There's no doubt that you are right in what you say about energy density etc. But I think it is coming, it's inevitable that if we as a society decide that fossil fuels are not to be used in cars, then it's a very small leap to say "oh, and boats too."

To me the big question then is what an all electric boat looks like designed from the bottom up. And what advantages you could get as well. I've seen one, that you could have 2 drives in a mono for very minimal weight penalty. You can also say that recharging from either solar or hydro-generators when sailing should take away most range worries. With only making progress in a flat calm then an issue.

Your example about motoring for 24 hours because the wind was against you is interesting. In an age of no fossil fuels on boats, would you choose to own a boat that was better at going to windward, or choose to go somewhere else?

To address two of your points:
1) Yes, a boat designed from the bottom up to use electric power is probably a feasible way it could be done. We all have heavy keels whose weight could be replaced by batteries - no need, even, for sophisticated battery technology if designed right. But many (most?) of us don't buy new boats, and retrofitting electric power to a boat like my Moody isn't a feasible proposition - there simply isn't anywhere to put the necessary batteries, as she has a very shallow bilge and a bolted on fin keel.

2) In the case I referred to, it was a relocation trip, and I had to get from A to B, without options about where A and B were! I could have sailed, but it would have required a leg out to the middle of the North Sea and a leg back, along with a frustrating set of short tacks near my destination in a relatively narrow channel. It was also in April, so the liekelihood of the weather remaining suitable for nearly two days would have been a bit of a gamble. The distance (and time) would have been increased by at least 50% - and we found 26 hours at sea quite tiring enough! In my new cruising ground, I often don't have choices about the direction I'm heading - I'll go aground on other courses! As far as I'm concerned, good endurance under motor when necessary is an important safety point.

 

[capnsensible]

Anyone in the biz know if the saf+ method of manufacturing kerosene is a goer?

 

[Zing]

I can easily see a situation where fossil fuels are banned for personal use but allowed for shipping and aviation. Viable electric cars are, in my opinion, the thing that allows the politicians to make that leap.

And there is also the question of supply. If there is no road diesel, is there enough demand in other uses of diesel for there to be a viable diesel industry?

There are enough crazy, idealistic people around for leisure boating fuel to get banned as you say, but shipping fuel and jet fuel is essentially the same stuff and burnt in vastly greater quantities, so it would be really, churlish, petty and nasty to ban it for leisure use and not for shipping and aviation. Hopefully renewable biodiesel would be permitted as I can’t see any practical alternative. Fuel cells maybe, but they require a similar liquid biofuel. Ditto hydrogen power. My money is on diesel in one form or another for many decades yet.

The supply concerns won’t be an issue because we will just burn jet fuel in our diesels instead if we have to. It’s nearly the same.

 

[SaltyC]

Not unless they solve the problem of diesel powered shipping first. Not much freight is going to get transported if diesel is banned. Actually you can make diesel from plant oil, so if we have gone all zero fossil fuel by then motorboating can be as green as a wind powered boat.

AAh don't forget HMRC are changing the rules to get leisure craft (YACHTS) to consider 'alternative' propulsion hence you have to use white diesel, yet Trains can continue with Tax free Red Diesel when an 'Alternative 'has been available for Decades.

 

[flaming]

To address two of your points:
1) Yes, a boat designed from the bottom up to use electric power is probably a feasible way it could be done. We all have heavy keels whose weight could be replaced by batteries - no need, even, for sophisticated battery technology if designed right. But many (most?) of us don't buy new boats, and retrofitting electric power to a boat like my Moody isn't a feasible proposition - there simply isn't anywhere to put the necessary batteries, as she has a very shallow bilge and a bolted on fin keel.

2) In the case I referred to, it was a relocation trip, and I had to get from A to B, without options about where A and B were! I could have sailed, but it would have required a leg out to the middle of the North Sea and a leg back, along with a frustrating set of short tacks near my destination in a relatively narrow channel. It was also in April, so the liekelihood of the weather remaining suitable for nearly two days would have been a bit of a gamble. The distance (and time) would have been increased by at least 50% - and we found 26 hours at sea quite tiring enough! In my new cruising ground, I often don't have choices about the direction I'm heading - I'll go aground on other courses! As far as I'm concerned, good endurance under motor when necessary is an important safety point.

1. There's quite a bit of volume in your engine bay that wouldn't be taken up with an electric motor. Your fuel tank turned into batteries would be quite useful too. UMA's batteries are under their aft berth I think. But yes, not as much as ideal.
2. I think my theory is that this change will come and Diesel engines will cease to be normal on cruising boats within my lifetime. And I kind of hope so too. Amount of power you can store aside, in many ways electric motors are much more suitable as auxiliary engines for yachts, more reliable, can generate fuel as you sail, quieter, don't smell and more in keeping with sailing's "green" credentials.

So if we think of the sort of cruising you want to do, and design from the keel up an electric powered boat suitable for it, how does it differ to your current boat? Is it faster under sail to get that passage done in a similar time frame anyway, or more comfortable at sea so that 3 day trips are not an endurance feat in the way you describe? Or does it simply change cruising in that relocation trips like that are simply not as reliable?

 

[DJE]

Anyone in the biz know if the saf+ method of manufacturing kerosene is a goer?

I hadn't heard of that one but there is at least one other outfit looking at a similar process. Carbon Engineering capture CO2 out of the atmosphere which can then be combined with hydrogen from electrolysis of water to produce hydrocarbons. It requires heaps of renewable energy of course but good peak smoothing for nuclear or solar power stations.

 

[LONG_KEELER]

Not sure I totally agree there. I'm currently looking at an electric car with a range of nearly 300 miles. How many people really need to drive more than 300 miles without stopping for an hour or 2 to charge it up again? For most people having 300 miles "in the tank" at the start of each day from overnight charging would be more than enough.

In terms of boats, the technology exists for motoring range measured in the 10s of miles with a sensible battery bank now. it's only going to get better.
To further answer the question I posed, I think it will also change the emphasis in yacht design towards easily driven hulls that do not have to motor to make progress in light winds.

But the thing is, like it or not it's going to come, and probably sooner than you think. The question is how it changes sailing.

I think we are looking at much taller masts because a lot more sail area will be required .

Bowsprits might well come back and tankage weight will have to be reduced for the increase in batteries. Topsides and sails will be have to be covered in solar panels.

Boats will probably look rather boring but functional.

You would expect the leisure industry to convert first.

Still can't really see how power stations and wind farms can supply the
power, let alone store the elctricity.

Could be a good time to invest in oar industries . Two fifteen foot sweeps
of carbon fibre would only cost about a grand.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

1. There's quite a bit of volume in your engine bay that wouldn't be taken up with an electric motor. Your fuel tank turned into batteries would be quite useful too. UMA's batteries are under their aft berth I think. But yes, not as much as ideal.
2. I think my theory is that this change will come and Diesel engines will cease to be normal on cruising boats within my lifetime. And I kind of hope so too. Amount of power you can store aside, in many ways electric motors are much more suitable as auxiliary engines for yachts, more reliable, can generate fuel as you sail, quieter, don't smell and more in keeping with sailing's "green" credentials.

So if we think of the sort of cruising you want to do, and design from the keel up an electric powered boat suitable for it, how does it differ to your current boat? Is it faster under sail to get that passage done in a similar time frame anyway, or more comfortable at sea so that 3 day trips are not an endurance feat in the way you describe? Or does it simply change cruising in that relocation trips like that are simply not as reliable?

At my age, a three day trip at sea is going to be an endurance test no matter how sea-kindly a vessel I'm in. The motion alone is a trial - and when I did it, I was suffering from a back problem that was actually made worse by the trip. Also, there is no possibility that I could ever afford a new boat!

Your point about the existing engine space is a good one - but the space (in the Moody 31) is partly above the water-line, so it's not an ideal place for putting heavy batteries. Even more so the fuel tank, which is both above the water line and also on the starboard side of the boat.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I think we are looking at much taller masts because a lot more sail area will be required .

Bowsprits might well come back and tankage weight will have to be reduced for the increase in batteries. Topsides and sails will be have to be covered in solar panels.

Boats will probably look rather boring but functional.

You would expect the leisure industry to convert first.

Still can't really see how power stations and wind farms can supply the
power, let alone store the elctricity.

Thre's work going on which actually uses EVs as a potential store of electricity! It's quite clever stuff (i.e. I don't understand the maths!) in the operational research area.

 

[capnsensible]

I hadn't heard of that one but there is at least one other outfit looking at a similar process. Carbon Engineering capture CO2 out of the atmosphere which can then be combined with hydrogen from electrolysis of water to produce hydrocarbons. It requires heaps of renewable energy of course but good peak smoothing for nuclear or solar power stations.

I thought it looked interesting. Especially if electrolysis came from wind or hydro. Someone else mentioned kerosene works in diesel donks. So if they are producing in quantity for aviation, then once the process is cracked Mebbe maritime use too?

 

[HissyFit]

Hi All,

New member, first post. Is there somewhere to do introductions? Anyway, before I head off on a tangent, let's get back to the subject at hand.

It seems to me that society as a whole hasn't yet begun to face the issue of climate change seriously. We are not thinking laterally enough. All the talk is about battery and solar, diesel and hydrogen fuel cells. Everyone ignores the energy source that all cruisers have festering away in their holding tanks: methane. Methane is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas per unit volume than C02. Burn it and you get useable energy. Yes, you do get CO2 as well, but not 20 times the volume, and whatever method you were going to use to generate that energy would have produced CO2 anyway. Methane doesn't have the energy density of diesel, but it is more akin to solar in that it is constantly replenishing.

As you approach capacity on your batteries it becomes harder and harder to put any more juice in. When you can't charge any more, what are your solar panels doing? They could be used for electrolysis of the black water tank, to create a hydrogen, oxygen, methane mix. I'll have to leave it to smarter men than I to work out how to power a small turbine generator without causing the whole boat to go kaboom. Thankfully the world is full of smarter men than I, so we are not stuck on that point.

Some eco-warrior would probably try this, but I'm not holding my breath for its adoption, even though it is relatively simple, current and cost effective technology.

 

[Keith 66]

Im sure Greg Oddity has the answer to all this.......

 

[Praxinoscope]

Sorry Hissyfit, but I IMHO opinion you are incorrect in the assumption that we all have holding tanks, this may be true of the newer larger cruisers, but I would estimate that fewer than 20% -30% of the boats currently floating around the U.K. coastal waters have holding tanks, and many have no room to fit them.
It may be a simpler option for inland waterway boats, and in the very long term the turnover of new boats with holding tanks replacing older ones could bring this idea forward, but considering there are stil numerous 40, 50 and 60 year old boats in use it's not going to be a quick solution .

 

[HissyFit]

Aren't most yacht inboards simply modified versions of older car diesel engines? Surely they'd run on bio-diesel made from reprocessed chip fat?

 

[HissyFit]

Sorry Hissyfit, but I IMHO opinion you are incorrect in the assumption that we all have holding tanks,

I haven't made that assumption, but I can see why it is possible to assume that I have. Those that have, can. Those that have not, cannot. As they say "Every little helps".

 

[HissyFit]

Oh, I did say "all cruisers", didn't I? Just take that as default hyperbole mode.

 

[Beneteau381]

Modern cruise ship s are powered by electric, via pods. The have bloomin’ great generators to power them though!

Bloomin big gennies providing the power to go down a wire to the end user!

 

[TernVI]

Sorry Hissyfit, but I IMHO opinion you are incorrect in the assumption that we all have holding tanks, this may be true of the newer larger cruisers, but I would estimate that fewer than 20% -30% of the boats currently floating around the U.K. coastal waters have holding tanks, and many have no room to fit them.
It may be a simpler option for inland waterway boats, and in the very long term the turnover of new boats with holding tanks replacing older ones could bring this idea forward, but considering there are stil numerous 40, 50 and 60 year old boats in use it's not going to be a quick solution .

I would not be surprised, or disappointed, if holding tanks became obligatory.

It would be quite nice if IC engines were banned from lawnomowers and garden toys.

In the end, I think people will adapt to doing whatever sort of sailing fits with the rules of the day.
The end of red diesel will make many sailors think twice about planning to motor for hours on end.
An electric outboard to get in and out of the marina would be enough to let people do a lot of actual sailing.
I'd be fine with that.

I think in the next ten years we will see either the beginning of a serious world wide clamp down on fossil energy use, or a breakdown of what consensus there is now and a free for all.