Electric Power For Boats On The Broads

[grendel]

4 minutes ago, Bikertov said:

We would need to understand the capacity of a diesel tank, the energy that provided to the engine (ignore heating for now), then compare that to electric propulsion and the power needed for the same distance / time.

45 litres - 3-5 hours cruising each day for 5 days.for a good comparison with fuel vs electric ed china did a good comparison in the first few minutes of this video here - 

 

[RS2021]

Often when I read the debate on electric boats I think too many people look at today’s technology and conclude it can’t work. I agree on today’s technology it doesn’t work – if it did work it would already have happened. So I take the view of what needs to change in technology for it to happen. I personally don’t think we will see either mass electric cars or boats, until it is possible to recharge in 5-10 minutes and – in the case of boats - go 2-3 days before the next charge. I think boats have the extra challenge of needing fuel to cook and heat as well as for propulsion. I think this is a greater problem than just propulsion. This will need step changes in battery technology. I think this will happen and it will happen sooner than we think. So let’s imagine a battery – say the size of a gas bottle which will power a boat for a day. A couple will last two days. You pop into a boat yard and simply swap them. If you are unfortunate enough to run out in a remote spot it’s not impossible to bring a replacement. OK it may not look like this, but I think if we start to think of what a solution could look like, then someone might actually develop it. If we only think of current technology then it won’t.

There have been a lot of comments on the capability of the electricity infrastructure. An area I too have experience. I have to say I am much more optimistic about the ability of the distribution systems to develop to cater for electric propulsion. In the 1950’s and 60’s demand was doubling every 10 years and it got built. When roof top solar came along about 9GW (that’s about 3 Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Stations) was connected in a few years. Yes the industry huffed and puffed, but did it. Also the amount of wind generation which has been connected in massive and again it has been done, so I am confident that when the technology and the economics is right the distribution systems will get built. Maybe there too we need to think out of the box. So as far as wind generation is concerned there is a significant amount of off shore wind which comes ashore on the East Coast. National Grid is investing sums which make Grendel’s figures look like loose change to take this wind and transmit it across East Anglia and down to the South East and Midlands. If there was less power to transmit, they could save a fortune. So could National Grid invest in electric boats and infrastructure to use this wind power and save the cost of transmitting it across East Anglia? Pie in the sky? Maybe but someone somewhere will be thinking of equally seemingly daft schemes which may not be – and one of them will work.

[TheQ]

12 minutes ago, grendel said:

Horning to Potter is hardly a 5 hour days cruise, I like my 5 hour cruises, and some occasions will get up to 8 hours in, I somehow dont see me getting from Dilham to Polkeys mill on one charge, and then arriving to find no charging posts there either.

Exactly... that's why I've got the generator..

[Mouldy]

11 minutes ago, annv said:

And how do they produce Hydrogen?  Electricity!. John

That’s as maybe, but the issues arising from providing sufficient charging points for electric vehicles have yet to be answered.  Hypothetically, I live in a block of flats with limited parking spaces.  Where do I charge my car?  I live in a terraced house with no front garden and no off road parking.  Current legislation prevents me from having a trailing cable across the pavement.  How do I charge my car?  How do I even guarantee a parking space in the same road?

There are too many flaws in an ill thought out system to make it viable, unless they can recharge you car as it drives along the road with no attached cables.  It may happen, but not in the next 8 years when the sale of cars fuelled with fossil fuels are banned.

Come to think of it, are we still using gas to fire power stations?  That must be counter productive!

[TheQ]

oh reading the survey, I couldn't answer most of the questions because I'm not a hirer and I've already got an electric boat..

[Oddfellow]

1 minute ago, Mouldy said:

That’s as maybe, but the issues arising from providing sufficient charging points for electric vehicles have yet to be answered.  Hypothetically, I live in a block of flats with limited parking spaces.  Where do I charge my car?  I live in a terraced house with no front garden and no off road parking.  Current legislation prevents me from having a trailing cable across the pavement.  How do I charge my car?  How do I even guarantee a parking space in the same road?

There are too many flaws in an I’ll thought out system to make it viable, unless they can recharge you car as it drives along the road with no attached cables.  It may happen, but not in the next 8 years when the sale of cars fuelled with fossil fuels are banned.

Come to think of it, are we still using gas to fire power stations?  That must be counter productive!

I keep hearing this argument as to why electric vehicles won't work for people in flats, etc. The issue of charging on the road will be one of the easiest challenges to overcome. Councils will have to install (or allow the installation) of charging points at the kerbside of all residential streets which are controlled by bluetooth or similar identifying technology to charge you to charge your vehicle.

There are many other barriers to electric cars that aren't being discussed. Cost being one. They're hardly cheap and we're a generation away from a vibrant used market for these machines too. A subscription to a new Volvo leccy car will set you back £749 a month. That's just under a third of what I paid for my last two cars. Or, I could buy it for about a third of the value of a typical terrace house. 

These figures are madness themselves. There are plenty of people who are paying £300 or more a month for their cars, I know. I am not now and never will be one of them. How old will an electric car have to be before I can buy it for £2k and get maybe 3 years of motoring out of it?

 

 

[annv]

Hi Q would you change it to diesel or would you have a diesel boat next circumstances being the same. John

[grendel]

another thing i looked at many years ago was local generation, from non fossil sources, and at the time there was a great deal being made of small scale nuclear plants, small enough to supply a small village, these were a liquid salt reactor, and were designed to run using the nuclear fuel in a molten salt as the basis, the theory was if the reactor had to be shut down in a hurry the molten salt would encapsulate the fuel which would solidify into a solid lump and be relatively safe.

I am not sure what happened to that.

another option would be to refurbish the old windmills as wind turbines to generate locally to the moorings, that would work, except during a calm, or have a field of solar farm next to the mooring, also fine except when it was cloudy.

[floydraser]

7 minutes ago, Oddfellow said:

There are many other barriers to electric cars that aren't being discussed. Cost being one. They're hardly cheap and we're a generation away from a vibrant used market for these machines too. A subscription to a new Volvo leccy car will set you back £749 a month. That's just under a third of what I paid for my last two cars. Or, I could buy it for about a third of the value of a typical terrace house. 

And to add to the madness: Company car taxation - conventional engine £120/month - Fully electric £20/month.

At least one person has a top of the range electric Mercedes and just hires a conventional car when going on holiday, for convenience.

I imagine that has a influence of the electric car sales figures.

[RS2021]

3 minutes ago, grendel said:

another option would be to refurbish the old windmills as wind turbines to generate locally

Cut out the middleman. Build a boat with a mast and sail...

[oldgregg]

I've looked in to the numbers behind electric boats many times, and currently we're not quite there with the tech to make a proper electric boat.

A litre of diesel gives you about 10kWh of energy in theory, but diesel engines (particularly pushrod marine ones with mechanical injection pumps) are 30% efficient at the very most. So you get probably 3kWh out of it and the rest is lost as noise, heat and smoke.

So if the average boater uses around 100 litres of diesel for their holiday, then you need about 350kWh of battery capacity, allowing for the battery never being run completely flat.

That is A LOT. At current prices, a vehicle battery of that capacity would be around £35,000. And that's before you marinise to add heat exchanger cooling, battery pre-heating (for winter) and any other marine-specific bits that would be required.

That battery pack is also going to weigh at least two tonnes (probably quite a bit more) and you're going to have to design a hull that has the space and strength to keep it somewhere, probably under the saloon sole. The battery pack is going to be a rectangle that's something like nine inches thick as a minimum (think what is under the floor of a Tesla, and then stack three of them on top of each other).

You've then got the charging systems to think about, and any additional cooling that is required.

The actual motor is less of a concern, Torqeedo make one that would fit the bill and it doesn't even need a reduction box and it's not that big either. But it's not cheap, nor are the controls and dash panel for it.

Energy density is increasing every year and it'll continue to do so for a while as billions is being poured into battery research at the moment.

It'll be a while before we're ready for an electric Broads cruiser, though.

 

[ranworthbreeze]

2 hours ago, grendel said:

It does, but it wont be happening within the government timescales they are currently working to, because you would be looking at a 30+ year programme of work to achieve it. the transformer manufacturers would need to at least double their output of transformers, currently there are lead times of around 20 weeks on transformer supplies, and if you go to the bigger sizes for energy transmission across the country, the lead time is measured in years. Its just not possible, no matter what the government try to push.

Many of us have said this all along and if we stop buying electricity from Norway & France it will take even longer.

 

[rightsaidfred]

2 hours ago, Bikertov said:

There is a lot of discussion and comments around infrastructure, and why it can't cope with the demand and recharge points - and I understand / accept a lot of the comments.

What about the technology in the boats, both drive (motors) and fuel (batteries) - this has been touched on but not in great detail.

Some of you are saying that you get weeks cruising and heating out of a tank of diesel, but without actual figures to compare it is difficult to see how batteries would stack up against this.

We would need to understand the capacity of a diesel tank, the energy that provided to the engine (ignore heating for now), then compare that to electric propulsion and the power needed for the same distance / time.

Sorry that question dosnt make sense the equation is the difference and flexibility and convienience of filling up a diesel tank occasionally regardless of location against the need to be plugged in daily to recharge batteries at specific points restricting  your cruising freedom, not sure now if this is a serious comparison or  if you are playing devils advocate

Fred

[TheQ]

2 hours ago, annv said:

Hi Q would you change it to diesel or would you have a diesel boat next circumstances being the same. John

Probably no, it's  convenient to be able to row across to it in the depths of winter and not have to de-winterise the engine just to move from the moorings to the club for winter work. Or in the summer just for a short journey say up to black horse broad.. the solar panels can look after charging the batteries for that.

The boats permanent moorings are unlikely ever to get electricity, so I can't see not having a generator unless someone invents vastly better batteries and solar panels..

Eventually when I've finished the updates all cooking will be electric as well, though heating will be diesel.. as I don't wish to be tied to mooring at BA electric posts for heat in the winter..

 

[rightsaidfred]

2 hours ago, Bikertov said:

There is a lot of discussion and comments around infrastructure, and why it can't cope with the demand and recharge points - and I understand / accept a lot of the comments.

What about the technology in the boats, both drive (motors) and fuel (batteries) - this has been touched on but not in great detail.

Some of you are saying that you get weeks cruising and heating out of a tank of diesel, but without actual figures to compare it is difficult to see how batteries would stack up against this.

We would need to understand the capacity of a diesel tank, the energy that provided to the engine (ignore heating for now), then compare that to electric propulsion and the power needed for the same distance / time.

Sorry that question dosnt make sense the equation is the difference and flexibility and convienience of filling up a diesel tank occasionally regardless of location against the need to be plugged in daily to recharge batteries at specific points restricting  your cruising freedom, not sure now if this is a serious comparison or  if you are playing devils advocate

Fred

[rightsaidfred]

As I will happily be chugging around in my diesel driven boat untill such time as decripty catches up with me long before this becomes a remote possibility I will retire from this and get on with life.

Fred

[Vaughan]

1 hour ago, rightsaidfred said:

s I will happily be chugging around in my diesel driven boat untill such time as decripty catches up with me long before this becomes a remote possibility I will retire from this and get on with life.

I'm sorry Fred but I don't think that comment does you credit. You are obviously someone who loves the Broads just as I do. I am quite certain that my ashes will be scattered on Barton Broad a very long time before electric propulsion will be the norm, but we have to look to the future and try to plan for it.  We can't just turn our backs.

In fact, as an ex chairman of the Wherry Trust, I might imagine my ashes being chucked over the leeward side of the Albion, one day.  A nice thought!  That is actually quite a good analogy, since the wherries are what made the Broads navigations into what we know today.  I can't imagine them having to plug into the mains every night!

It is a very, very special place where cruising has its own unique pleasures.  If we go all electric, you won't be able to moor on a mud weight any more, to watch the sun go down over the flat, Norfolk skies.  Or wake up in the dawn to hear a bittern booming in the reeds, right beside you.

 

 

 

I am sorry, but pure electric hire boats will never give visitors this sort of experience.

 

[Bikertov]

1 hour ago, rightsaidfred said:

Sorry that question dosnt make sense the equation is the difference and flexibility and convienience of filling up a diesel tank occasionally regardless of location against the need to be plugged in daily to recharge batteries at specific points restricting  your cruising freedom, not sure now if this is a serious comparison or  if you are playing devils advocate

Fred

No - not playing devils advocate at all. My points are all serious and genuine.

My point is to understand the 'energy capacity' of a tank of boat diesel vs the 'energy capacity' of a battery pack suitable for a boat. That way, you can put true comparative figures to how long you could cruise in an electric boat vs a diesel one.

A lot of people are saying you would need to charge daily, vs a once a week tank fill, but without the actual stats to back that up.

Until I/we understand the true comparisons, it is not clear - although @oldgreggstarted to put figures to it. Also the video by Ed China also started to suggest the comparisons of the energy required vs petrol in that example.

I would again point out that there are not diesel pumps at every mooring, so you need to like-for-like compare these factors.

These are all the things needed to be vocalised in any wider discussion with the BA, Government etc if you are to have a chance of defending the continued use of diesel powered inland leisure boats.

[Bikertov]

8 minutes ago, Vaughan said:

I am sorry, but pure electric hire boats will never give visitors this sort of experience.

 

Vaughan - I would really like to hear more from you to understand your take on this subject, when you get the chance.

You seem to be very knowledgeable and well respected from what I have gathered since I joined the forum, and you have a lot of experience in running hire fleets and your own boats. I do hope you can find the time to share some of your knowledge and experience on this. 

[rightsaidfred]

23 minutes ago, Vaughan said:

I'm sorry Fred but I don't think that comment does you credit. You are obviously someone who loves the Broads just as I do. I am quite certain that my ashes will be scattered on Barton Broad a very long time before electric propulsion will be the norm, but we have to look to the future and try to plan for it.  We can't just turn our backs.

In fact, as an ex chairman of the Wherry Trust, I might imagine my ashes being chucked over the leeward side of the Albion, one day.  A nice thought!  That is actually quite a good analogy, since the wherries are what made the Broads navigations into what we know today.  I can't imagine them having to plug into the mains every night!

It is a very, very special place where cruising has its own unique pleasures.  If we go all electric, you won't be able to moor on a mud weight any more, to watch the sun go down over the flat, Norfolk skies.  Or wake up in the dawn to hear a bittern booming in the reeds, right beside you.

 

 

 

I am sorry, but pure electric hire boats will never give visitors this sort of experience.

 

Yes you are right and I do care

[rightsaidfred]

35 minutes ago, Vaughan said:

I'm sorry Fred but I don't think that comment does you credit. You are obviously someone who loves the Broads just as I do. I am quite certain that my ashes will be scattered on Barton Broad a very long time before electric propulsion will be the norm, but we have to look to the future and try to plan for it.  We can't just turn our backs.

In fact, as an ex chairman of the Wherry Trust, I might imagine my ashes being chucked over the leeward side of the Albion, one day.  A nice thought!  That is actually quite a good analogy, since the wherries are what made the Broads navigations into what we know today.  I can't imagine them having to plug into the mains every night!

It is a very, very special place where cruising has its own unique pleasures.  If we go all electric, you won't be able to moor on a mud weight any more, to watch the sun go down over the flat, Norfolk skies.  Or wake up in the dawn to hear a bittern booming in the reeds, right beside you.

 

 

 

I am sorry, but pure electric hire boats will never give visitors this sort of experience.

 

Yes  you are right and I do care, I am not turning my back on progress and like everyone have adopted technology when and where it is appropriate but I do it in a real world and I do it when it has a proven practical and realistic value, what I don't do is make life fit technological trends that are unrealistic.

Fred

[rightsaidfred]

36 minutes ago, Bikertov said:

No - not playing devils advocate at all. My points are all serious and genuine.

My point is to understand the 'energy capacity' of a tank of boat diesel vs the 'energy capacity' of a battery pack suitable for a boat. That way, you can put true comparative figures to how long you could cruise in an electric boat vs a diesel one.

A lot of people are saying you would need to charge daily, vs a once a week tank fill, but without the actual stats to back that up.

Until I/we understand the true comparisons, it is not clear - although @oldgreggstarted to put figures to it. Also the video by Ed China also started to suggest the comparisons of the energy required vs petrol in that example.

I would again point out that there are not diesel pumps at every mooring, so you need to like-for-like compare these factors.

These are all the things needed to be vocalised in any wider discussion with the BA, Government etc if you are to have a chance of defending the continued use of diesel powered inland leisure boats.

But there is no like for like, you are trying to compare chalk with cheese, allowing that different boats have different size tanks you only need to fill at or near your home base for several days or even weeks cruising before refilling at the same point at your leisure you don't need outlets on river moorings, no existing batteries can compare in any respect, you don't need stats for that.

Fred 

[grendel]

2 hours ago, Bikertov said:

A lot of people are saying you would need to charge daily, vs a once a week tank fill, but without the actual stats to back that up.

very roughly extrapolating from Ed Chinas figures, for water rails 45 litre tank of diesel, to get the same cruising range you would need 5 tons of lead acid batteries (and thats without thinking how long they would take to charge compared to a five minute at the pump) or nearly a ton of Lithium batteries, start adding those sorts of weights and the boat us either going to be sitting very low in the water and thus requiring more energy to push through the water, or will be sitting on the bottom unable to float.

these are the stats, and the reason you would have less batteries and charge more often, bigger boats would require even more batteries to get the equivalent range, and then you have the problem of recharging between hires, no 4 hour turnarounds with electric, probably nearer 4 days to recharge that lot.

 

[Vaughan]

Well this is quite a thread, isn't it?  Three pages in one afternoon and evening!  Lots of good comment and I think I agree with all the views expressed.

You are all correct in that the big stumbling block will be infrastructure.  If there are not enough charging points it won't work and I have seen that proved on the Canal du Midi.

But first, let's talk about the boat itself, and how it would have to be fitted out.  Electric boats are nothing new on the Broads!  My parents were crossing the river in Thorpe every day in an electric launch from 1947 onwards.  The batteries needed changing about every 3 weeks and they were still using it daily, 40 years later.  They were the traditional NIFE cells which were also used on hire cruisers and were mostly U.S. Army surplus from the War.  In my opinion they are still the best form of low discharge, deep cycle battery.  The same sort of thing that they use in diesel/electric submarines.

Battery technology has come ahead in leaps and bounds these days and I will leave that part to Oldgregg, who knows a lot about it!

My good friend Robin Richardson has been successfully running, building and selling electric day boats out of Potter Heigham since the mid 70s.

But there is a very big difference between a day launch and a cabin cruiser!  Most electric launches are built to look a bit like old Thames steamboats, for the simple reason that they are a long, very narrow fine entry hull that will glide easily through the water so they don't need a powerful motor.  I understand that some of the BA rangers' launches now run on a diesel/electric hybrid system, so that they can poodle about at 4MPH on their batteries.  This is the same principle, as they are a very long, narrow craft.  Waterline length on a displacement hull means less power is needed and of course, less wash.

A Broads cabin cruiser is a different matter.  They weigh 10 tons or more and have a wide beam for stability, so they need more power.  We must accept also that they need  enough power to navigate the tidal lower reaches of the Bure and Yare, GYYS and Breydon Water.  Which means they must be capable of maintaining  7MPH for 4 hours at least.  Anything less would not be safe.

Most hire cruisers have the Nanni 4220 engine, which has a power rating of 35 kilowatts.  Let's say 27 kilowatts at 7 MPH - around 2000RPM.  So an electric hire boat will need a motor of the same power rating.  That means it would use 108 kilowatt/hours per day of battery capacity in 4 hours running.  Not only have the batteries got to be powerful enough to provide that but they must also have a charging point that can replenish that amount overnight.  I don't suppose the motor would run on 12 volts but to give an idea, 27kilowatts for 4 hours on 12 volts would be 9000 amp/hours.

And then we come to the domestic electrics - lighting, fridge, toilets, TV and nowadays, the essential microwave.  They will no longer be fed by an engine alternator, so they also, must be charged overnight on shore power.  I know that a big hire boat without TV or microwave will use 250 amp/hours a day on 12 volts.  Oddfellow (Andy) mentions 500 amp/hours for a modern boat with all the electric goodies and I would think he is probably right.

And now a another big problem - cooking and heating.  An electric cooker would basically mean you would have to be plugged in the bank to use it, so I guess that would still be gas.  Most boats have diesel fired blown air central heating.  There is also a very good gas version by Trumatic, used in almost all camper vans.  If this must now be done electrically, I really don't see how unless it comes direct from shore power.  To give an idea, in American marinas each mooring "slip" has two power points : one on 30 amps to run the boat's domestics and one on 75 amps to run the air conditioning.

I can envisage electric cruisers actually having to use two power points on a mooring : one at 32 amps for the domestics and another more powerful (on DC by the way) to charge the propulsion batteries.

 

Have I put you off yet?  If not, my next post will discuss the logistics of operating within the cruising area and the effect this will have on what we would call a "normal" cruising holiday.

 

 

[Vaughan]

By the way, I forgot about hot water for showers. Where's that going to come from?