What's the point of hybrid power in a planing boat?

[jfm]

Actually Jfm the QE2 had this system of multiple engines driving in her case shafts.

No, I said QM2. QM2 has electric motors driving her propellors, and a pile of diesel engines and gas turbines to drive alternators which make the electricity. She only runs whatever number of prime movers that she needs to generate whatever electricity she needs

 

[benjenbav]

When did they change over from blokes stripped to the waist shovelling coal into furnaces?

Ooops, that would be QM1

 

[BartW]

Reading the article in this month's MBY about Sunseeker installing a hybrid power system in one of their 70 footers, I kept asking myself why? Somebody flame me if I'm wrong but as I understand it, all the electric motor/gennie thing does is allow the batteries to drive the boat at displacement speed and power the 220V systems at anchor for a while. So, you'll be able to potter in and out of your marina under battery power and maybe not use your gennie at anchor for a period. Big deal. For 100% of the time when the boat is planing, it's being powered by the usual monster diesel lumps. The total fuel saving must be tiny and the total CO2 savings must be negative because of the carbon cost of refining the lithium for the batteries, replacing/disposing of the batteries periodically and manufacturing the electric motor/gennie, not to mention the extra weight added to the boat which will increase the fuel consumption at speed.
The old cynic in me can't help thinking that this is a blatant marketing exercise designed to appeal to right-on eco celebs and other bleeding heart rich people who can now sleep easy at night knowing they've bought a 'green' power boat. Yeah, right

completely with you on this,
about a year ago there was a picture on the cover of MBY of large bleu motor yacht driven by hybrid power, (don't remember the brand name)
first I thought this a joke, then I thought, do they really believe that there are boating people to take that ?
I kept asking myself if they believe that some boating people are fools or what? (perhaps I am )

 

[jfm]

about a year ago there was a picture on the cover of MBY of large bleu motor yacht driven by hybrid power, (don't remember the brand name)

It was Ferretti's Mochi LR23.

 

[Assassin]

Most of it is pure tosh, the additional cost financially and in CO2 outweighs the savings in efficiency in most cases.

In motor vehicles an average 80% of the emissions are produced in the manufacture and disposal of the vehicle, the remaining 20% comes from the vehicle operating.

Hybrid power is attracting many problems, most notably the fact you cannot insure them as insurers cannot get accurate data about battery packs, this applies equally to boats as it does to cars.

Hybrid power is very expensive due to the limited life of the battery packs themselves, and the expense or replacing them, this is considerably more frequent if they are fast charged.

Diesel electric has a purpose, this is mainly locomotion where they haul heavy loads and require constant torque, and for certain lifting applications such as very heavy lifting cranes, it is certainly not suitable for pleasure boats. It has a place in much larger marine applications as these are broadly similar to locomotion.

 

[Latestarter1]

have to agree violently with Assasin.........plain nuts, or is it?

I have been involved at the very edge of the new Routemaster bus for London. !00% hype about what it will look like, and obsession with emissions.

Baseline is conventional low emission double deck bus with Euro5 Cummins, Scania or Volvo mid range diesel engine each costing circa £190,000 a pop. Service life of around 10 to 15 years with first operator then disposed of with 7% residual value.

The new Routemaster is designed by committe with next to no experience in actual long term running costs. When I was involved driveline was a skinny Ford hydrogen engine with a zero durability track record. Common sense would have at least dictated a small mid range low emission constant speed diesel engine hybrid which is proven technology. Nope let’s go with a hydrogen engine. Where they are now I neither know nor care, low tech bus shells being built in Ireland, shipped to California for zero emission driveline to be installed and then shipped back to the UK.

The cost..........1.6 million PER BUS for the frst five, with cost PREDICTED fall to a target figure of £300,000 per bus after the first five or so. After five years buses WILL require capital investment of over £100,000 each, for battery packs. The predicted fuel saving per bus over current technology could be around £4,500 per annum, i.e. 6 instead of 5 MPG.

Hydrogen costs us CO2 to produce, may be clean to people around it but not for the bigger picture. Swedes describe it as not zero emissions but other people’s emissions. The company in California doing the bus drive line are being nailed by the EPA for putting 110,000 lbs of toxic metals into the atmosphere. Zero emissions is a euphemism for perpetual motion.

So is Boris Johnson nuts, maybe. Is Brian Souter nuts, certainly not. As a major shareholder in SS he knows how to play the system. I suspect this is a clever ploy to get an injection of much needed EU capital into the company by the back door. Remember, not only does Brian Souter own Stagecoach Holdings he also owns Alexander Dennis who build what? Buses. Souter purchased the bus manufacturer off the receiver and then obtained a wedge of funding to produce what…hybrid buses.

Rant over.

 

[mjf]

No, I said QM2. QM2 has electric motors driving her propellors, and a pile of diesel engines and gas turbines to drive alternators which make the electricity. She only runs whatever number of prime movers that she needs to generate whatever electricity she needs

Yes I know that you referred to QM2 which has pods - my point is that this techn was used 20yrs ago + on QE2. Its not that new. QE2 had I think 9 prime movers of which one was used for hotel services and the rest fired up as needed to produce the elect that the shafts demanded.

 

[jfm]

my point is that this techn was used 20yrs ago + on QE2. Its not that new.

Um, ok, but I think you're violently agreeing with me. When I first mentioned electric motors I specifically said it wasn't new. I wrote "Propshafts driven by electric motors (which of course isn't new; see s/s Canberra...". Canberra was a 1960 launch, and had electric motors on the shafts back then

 

[oceanfroggie]

Seems rather like a broken pencil - pointless!

 

[mjf]

yes I violently agree! I missed the P&O bit sorry. I reckon those were shaft generators that provided hotel elect power from the steam turbine driven shafts.

 

[jfm]

yes I violently agree! I missed the P&O bit sorry. I reckon those were shaft generators that provided hotel elect power from the steam turbine driven shafts.

You mean P+O's s/s Canberra? No, the steam turbines drove alternators which fed electric motors driving the shafts. That was an engineering triumph at the time though commonish now (though not with steam turbines!). I presume the same alternators provided the hotel power on Canberra too, but I'm not sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Canberra

 

[mjf]

Wow I did'nt know that.

There were some 1940's Liberty ships that had the same idea - steam turbines producing elect for motive power come to think of it.

I do quite like the idea of harbour steaming on our sort of stuff on aux gensets and using the big engines when real Umph is needed. Thats not hybrid but good use of equipment thats in the main already there.

 

[Latestarter1]

I served with a lecky who had been on Canberra, as one of the first AC ships had Lawence Scott & Electromotors control gear. Drawback was you had to manually bring the phases together when putting a generator on line, do it wrong blow the trip and you plunge ship into darkness. Never served on an AC ship always good old 220 DC. Taking a genny off line is exciting, you pull the breaker out which triggers an automatic blast of compressed air across contacts to extinguish the spark.

Amazing thing I Googled Lawence Scott & Electromotors is still in business building large motor control gear...then I looked in detail, must have been good stuff, Germans purchased the company years ago!

I did some designs years ago for a very long range single screw trawler yacht with a separate shaft motor. In the event of having to shut down main engine shaft was powered by from the main genny. We could also use motor as shaft generator to charge battery banks. Never thought about it but now we could add some modern lithium batteries and vessel could run in stealth mode.

 

[jfm]

I do quite like the idea of harbour steaming on our sort of stuff on aux gensets and using the big engines when real Umph is needed. Thats not hybrid but good use of equipment thats in the main already there.

Yup me too. I'd love a big alternator-cum-motor on each shaft, so could run one engine for 15kt cruising and one or two gensets for harbour work. As you say, not hybrid at all (ie forget the sodding lithium batteries, complete waste of time) but would be very nice frictionless kit. I'd have ordered that as an £80k option, if it had been available on new boat. (I have no idea how much it should cost if it became more mass produced)

 

[aquapower]

Amazing thing I Googled Lawence Scott & Electromotors is still in business building large motor control gear...then I looked in detail, must have been good stuff, Germans purchased the company years ago!

I remember them well as one of the factorys is a couple of roads away from my parents house and used to have to deliver newspapers there when I about 13, as far as im aware the factory is still in use, will have a look when I go past at weekend.

 

[wakeup]

Yup me too. I'd love a big alternator-cum-motor on each shaft, so could run one engine for 15kt cruising and one or two gensets for harbour work. As you say, not hybrid at all (ie forget the sodding lithium batteries, complete waste of time) but would be very nice frictionless kit. I'd have ordered that as an £80k option, if it had been available on new boat. (I have no idea how much it should cost if it became more mass produced)

Could you not just add a couple of souped up trolling motors to the transom and drive the boat with a couple of switches? I'll sell you my version for £79,500 ;-)

or could you propel your new boat at low speed by flapping the stabs ;-)

 

[Assassin]

There are a number of other issues with hybrid power, most prominent is the rare earth motors made in China, but why? cost and lack of Health and Safety along with no environmental regulations is the simple answer. How many people would buy hybrid powered systems if they knew they were killing Chinese workers as their average life of motor manufacturing workers is 5-10 years because of the toxic emissions and lack of safety equipment. What happens to the extremely toxic waste materials from the manufacture of rare earth motors? it is just dumped on waste land or in rivers, and pollutes them for centuries.

What about the battery packs themselves, research shows them to be very flawed, especially in cold weather where their capacity is reduced to around 40% of their full capacity in warm weather. Environmentally they do not stack up either as their environmental costs of manufacture, service life, and disposal costs add up to much more environmental emissions than an internal combustion engine over a life cycle. How do you use these battery packs, will they be rented, bought, and how will they be charged? whichever way they will be extremely expensive as their exhorbitant costs have to be covered if they are rented or bought outright.

Hydrogen is another misnomer because it cannot be used in diesel engines, so it means replacing marine diesels with petrol units to allow its, or other gas as fuel usage, another great expense. In addition we have the lower efficiency of petrols in larger craft and lack of low end torque which is the predominant factor. Look around to see if you can find twin petrols to propel a boat of around 45' which provide the torque and have the fuel efficiency of diesels, i cannot find anyone making them in petrol, just diesel.
Hydrogen has many other problems, most rely on petrol to start and run the engines until they begin to warm, you then switch over to hydrogen, and hydrogen attracts a power loss of around 20% to that of the same engine running on petrol, and it uses much more fuel when running on gas. Running cars on gas is only ecomonical because of its very low duty rating as it is taxed at low levels, these are rising negating the cost effectiveness of gas as a propulsion fuel. Gas has other problems too, mainly its transportation and storage, unlike petrol and diesel it requires a considerable infrastructure to allow it to be sold to the public, and the installations are above ground which means space is needed to store it.

Whichever way we look at it, most of us will not see the mass change to hybrid or hydrogen fuelled craft in our lifetimes.

 

[ian38_39]

So for Hydrogen read LPG is what you are saying?

Admit to being totally uneducated in Hydrogen but I did read an article where a hotel, in I think Sweden but may be wrong, was producing Hydrogen for its own fuel cells that powered electric motors for its fleet of day boats.

The Hydrogen was produced in a plant powered 100% by solar energy. Seemed pretty clean to me.

 

[westernman]

So for Hydrogen read LPG is what you are saying?

Admit to being totally uneducated in Hydrogen but I did read an article where a hotel, in I think Sweden but may be wrong, was producing Hydrogen for its own fuel cells that powered electric motors for its fleet of day boats.

The Hydrogen was produced in a plant powered 100% by solar energy. Seemed pretty clean to me.

This is the whole point about the hydrogen cycle.
Hydrogen can be produced at times when you have excess solar, wind or nuclear capacity, and stores a lot of energy in a small space (when compressed and cooled) much like petrol or diesel. When used, either burnt in pretty conventional internal combustion engines or used directly to make electricity in a fuel cell it is very clean.

If we have hydrogen filling stations, then the fuel cell and electric motors will be the choice way of propelling cars in the future. It would also be attractive for yachts and motor boats as well. There already exists a fuel cell for yachts for the house electricity requirement.

I think oil needs to get to more than $200 a barrel before enough impetus is given to make hydrogen an everyday fuel.

This might happen faster than we think, with the rate at which China's energy requirements are increasing, my Yanmar Diesel should last long enough.

 

[westernman]

Gas has other problems too, mainly its transportation and storage, unlike petrol and diesel it requires a considerable infrastructure to allow it to be sold to the public, and the installations are above ground which means space is needed to store it.

Whichever way we look at it, most of us will not see the mass change to hybrid or hydrogen fuelled craft in our lifetimes.

There is considerable infrastructure required for petrol and diesel. And this infrastructure needs to be replaced and updated to new safety standards on a regular basis. This is done by garages for petrol and diesel because there are a lot of customers for those fuels. The infrastructure for LPG or hydrogen is not really any more complicated than that for petrol or diesel, but there are just not that many customers, so it is not an economical proposition for most garages. Because most garages don't stock it, there is little interest in LPG among the general public. Also because of little demand, it makes price higher per car as well, which of course does not help sales.

I think we will see commercial hydrogen fueled cars in my lifetime. With the rate at which China's demand for energy is rising, I think oil will be at more than $200 a barrel in less than 25 years from now. At that price, I think an energy cycle using solar, wind and nuclear for generating electricity and making hydrogen for fueling transport becomes economic.

I wonder how easy it is to adapt a Trent 900 jet engine to run on hydrogen?