Electric Power For Boats On The Broads

[BroadAmbition]

Where indeed, not to mention daily washing up and general cleaning, then there is the kettle for hot drinks, looks like we will have to revert to gas water heaters, that's a step backwards surely?

Griff

[rightsaidfred]

Thank you Vaughan, can I add the likes of Bow and Stern thrusters to your breakdown, I know some are hydraulic but many are electric then there is also canopies and mudweights.

Is it right to assume your consumption ratings relate to shaft drive and if so knowing there is a difference with diesel consumption how much more  capacity would be required for hydraulic drive, thanks.

Fred

[Vaughan]

12 minutes ago, rightsaidfred said:

Is it right to assume your consumption ratings relate to shaft drive and if so knowing there is a difference with diesel consumption how much more  capacity would be required for hydraulic drive, thanks.

Actually I have just realised I quoted the Nanni with hydraulic drive!  On a reduction gearbox it would be 43.35 KW at 2800 revs.

I don't suppose there would be hydraulic drive on an electric motor as they turn rather slowly, with a big coarse pitch prop.

[Mouldy]

17 hours ago, Oddfellow said:

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.

That may be simple in theory, but how long is that going to take?  Take a town like Northampton near where we used to live, where there are many streets of terraced houses with no front gardens.  Digging up the roads to install cabling substantial enough to power charge points at say 6 metre spacing will take months, and will the supply infrastructure to the area area be capable of supporting them.

Personally, I think it will take too long to be viable and the cost implication will be massive.  Grendel will be able to comment further, I’m sure, as I’m a layman in this area, but multiply that workload across every town and city in the UK and it becomes a massive undertaking that I doubt there would be enough trained people to install.

Again, I repeat, the idea of ploughing all of our efforts into electric is flawed and research and development of something sustainable, such as hydrogen fuel cells is the way to go.

[Vaughan]

35 minutes ago, BroadAmbition said:

gas water heaters, that's a step backwards surely?

A big step back!  Those things were frightfully dangerous.

Trumatic do a combined boiler/heating system which is used on Locaboat hire boats and is excellent, although it uses quite a lot of propane gas.  Or of course, there could still be a small diesel tank to run the blown air heating.  Webasto also do a heater which heats hot water as well.  But all this is fossil fuels again, isn't it?

Same thing if you install a generator to charge the batteries.  This is just a water cooled diesel which is chucking the same old particulates into the river as the main engine used to, so you are just defeating the whole object of the exercise!

[RS2021]

27 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

Digging up the roads to install cabling substantial enough to power charge points at say 6 metre spacing will take months, and will the supply infrastructure to the area area be capable of supporting them.

 

33 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

it becomes a massive undertaking that I doubt there would be enough trained people to install.

A significant workforce built up to install all the PV (Solar) on peoples houses is a fairly short space of time. This workforce could have rolled straight on to charging points, but has now started to disperse. The way battery technology is going however, for cars I think we will see rapid chargers taking over and so less of a need for chargers everywhere, probably about the same density as petrol stations. I am aware of people working on 'super hubs' to charge vehicles utilising spare capacity on the Grid, although this may be equally flawed as they may be in the wrong place, but I don't think we have seen the proper solution technically yet, so we aren't seeing the mass investment which will come.

34 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

Again, I repeat, the idea of ploughing all of our efforts into electric is flawed and research and development of something sustainable, such as hydrogen fuel cells is the way to go.

I agree. I think in practice there are people working on many possible solutions for sustainable energy with batteries and hydrogen being the current leaders. Which will get is big technical breakthrough first and become the winner, who knows, but lets keep working on both. Tell me, did you buy VHS or Betamax back in the day?

[RS2021]

2 hours ago, Vaughan said:

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.

I think heating will be big problem just as in houses when gas boilers are banned. In houses ground source heat pumps are being touted. So, how practical would a water source heat pump be on a boat?

[Vaughan]

2 minutes ago, RS2021 said:

So, how practical would a water source heat pump be on a boat?

No idea. Some boats have keel cooling, which is very efficient.  Broads water gets pretty cold in off season so I am not sure how much of a heat exchange would be achieved.  Also if there is external pipework involved that would be more drag on the motor.  It would also only last as long as it took for the hirer to run it aground!

[Mouldy]

1 hour ago, RS2021 said:

I think heating will be big problem just as in houses when gas boilers are banned. In houses ground source heat pumps are being touted. So, how practical would a water source heat pump be on a boat?

To be effective, the pipes for ground source heat pumps need to be buried deep and about one meter apart.  To retrofit into a house that’s already built, it entails digging up your garden to lay the pipes, which in itself is a major piece of work, both disruptive and expensive, so easier to fit in new properties.  The trouble is, new builds generally are on small plots, so not suited to the amount of underground pipe work necessary.  Of course, you could build on larger plots, but with the cost of land as high as it is, that would increase the cost of the property and push them outside the reach of folk with average incomes and reduce the number of homes that could potentially be built on a piece of land.  Both of these factors go against the requirements to build low cost affordable housing to allow first time buyers into the property market.

Yet another no win for short sighted policies, I think.

[Bikertov]

3 hours ago, Vaughan said:

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.

 

 

Thank you Vaughan - that is a really well reasoned piece with some good comparative figures.

Once you see in black-and-white the propulsion power needed for a days cruising - and you make a very valid safety point re. GY and Breydon - when added to the domestic power needs, it does become very clear that current battery technology of energy capacity vs size vs weight compared to diesel just doesn't yet cut it.

You have also addressed the not-so-obvious matters that non-boat owners would not think about, such as heating, cooking etc (others have also touched on these points).

I suppose what must be emphasized in these discussions, especially for a cruiser rather than a day boat,  is that you are looking at a residential accommodation unit as well as a transport vehicle that is effectively off-grid, so it needs to carry all it's own power and sustenance requirements (eg water, waste holding) on board, in a relatively small space. These points might seem obvious for those that have a boat, but not for the "uninitiated".

When you scale up, would we ever see a cruise liner being battery powered ? The big warships and submarines are nuclear, and the rest use fuel-oil.

Cleary in the future we are not all going to have a micro-nuclear reactor on board in Norfolk ...

[Bikertov]

2 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

To be effective, the pipes for ground source heat pumps need to be buried deep and about one meter apart.  To retrofit into a house that’s already built, it entails digging up your garden to lay the pipes, which in itself is a major piece of work, both disruptive and expensive, so easier to fit in new properties.  The trouble is, new builds generally are on small plots, so not suited to the amount of underground pipe work necessary.  Of course, you could build on larger plots, but with the cost of land as high as it is, that would increase the cost of the property and push them outside the reach of folk with average incomes and reduce the number of homes that could potentially be built on a piece of land.  Both of these factors go against the requirements to build low cost affordable housing to allow first time buyers into the property market.

Yet another no win for short sighted policies, I think.

I believe that the pipes for ground source heat pumps can be installed vertically, so you would not necessarily need a large footprint plot.

[annv]

A pure electric boat for weekly hire is not possible BUT a plug in Hybrid would be possible for private use, as i mentioned before a hybrid will need more human input along with experience of the system i would expect cooking and heating would be gas and diesel, using a Hybrid system wont be cheaper but would reduce the diesel fuel consumption along with noise and pollution, John

[annv]

Hi Biker Yes my grandson is a porter at a Cambridge collage they are building a new accommodation block with under ground vertical ground sauce heating system, my nephew has a heat exchanger outside his house that heats it very well this runs of very little power he tells me,   not practical for a boat BUT ! John

[Smoggy]

1 hour ago, RS2021 said:

A significant workforce built up to install all the PV (Solar) on peoples houses is a fairly short space of time. This workforce could have rolled straight on to charging points, but has now started to disperse.

Which is crazy, solar should be part of the building regs for all new builds in my book, cuts out distribution issues as well as generation issues, and if most is used on site there's less losses of transmission.

[Mouldy]

25 minutes ago, Bikertov said:

I believe that the pipes for ground source heat pumps can be installed vertically, so you would not necessarily need a large footprint plot.

So they can, however depending on where your house is situated and the land it’s built on, sinking a borehole could present a few problems, not to mention cost.

All this info has been copied from this website:

https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/ground-source-heat-pumps/

[Bikertov]

9 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

So they can, however depending on where your house is situated and the land it’s built on, sinking a borehole could present a few problems, not to mention cost.

All this info has been copied from this website:

https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/ground-source-heat-pumps/

 

Of course, cost and other problems must be taken into account - as with the whole boat discussion.

With all new ideas and technology, the first thing is the feasibility, then the financial viability. 

[Mouldy]

Just now, Bikertov said:

Of course, cost and other problems must be taken into account - as with the whole boat discussion.

With all new ideas and technology, the first thing is the feasibility, then the financial viability. 

Get that, but prohibiting the use of gas to fuel heating in new homes from 2025 before there is a financially viable alternative is the wrong way to do it.  The only affordable alternative at the moment will be electric for the majority of new builds, which is not economical to run.  As I’ve said before, knee jerk reactions to satisfy the eco warriors clamouring for immediate action.

In time, there will be affordable and viable solutions but they will take time to develop. There will be an enormous cost to rectify ill thought out solutions in the future.

[Bikertov]

42 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

Get that, but prohibiting the use of gas to fuel heating in new homes from 2025 before there is a financially viable alternative is the wrong way to do it.  The only affordable alternative at the moment will be electric for the majority of new builds, which is not economical to run.  As I’ve said before, knee jerk reactions to satisfy the eco warriors clamouring for immediate action.

In time, there will be affordable and viable solutions but they will take time to develop. There will be an enormous cost to rectify ill thought out solutions in the future.

I completely agree with you.

Too often there are political decisions made to appease various groups, without understanding the knock on effects.

[grendel]

4 hours ago, Mouldy said:

That may be simple in theory, but how long is that going to take?  Take a town like Northampton near where we used to live, where there are many streets of terraced houses with no front gardens.  Digging up the roads to install cabling substantial enough to power charge points at say 6 metre spacing will take months, and will the supply infrastructure to the area area be capable of supporting them.

Personally, I think it will take too long to be viable and the cost implication will be massive.  Grendel will be able to comment further, I’m sure, as I’m a layman in this area, but multiply that workload across every town and city in the UK and it becomes a massive undertaking that I doubt there would be enough trained people to install.

Again, I repeat, the idea of ploughing all of our efforts into electric is flawed and research and development of something sustainable, such as hydrogen fuel cells is the way to go.

The majority of that cost I quoted for installing cable is the civils work, cable itself isnt too expensive compared to the installation, now assume a team of men can trench 100m per day, with all the cables that would need to be laid, which must be in the region of tens of thousands of kilometers. well I will let you do the maths for how long a single team would take.

the real issue is that all of the utility providers have work for all their teams on a full time basis as it is, so more digging gangs would be needed, trained how not to damage the existing cables and other utilities, and then someone has to fund these posts too. a shortage of brickies and carpenters would be peanuts to the shortage of diggers and civils works teams that a project like this would generate. then you need someone to make that cable. and truck drivers to deliver it.

you could provide full employment nationwide and still be short of manpower.

on top of that all those teams would be spending half their time trying to find somewhere to charge their electric vans near the work sites.

[TheQ]

one thing I think people are missing is the transmission losses of hydraulic or conventional  gears, This is quite substantial especially with hydraulics.. an electric motor does not have to be anywhere near the power of a diesel..

With hydrualic power you could be losing up to 30%. A mechanical gear box loses less but has frictional losses and sometimes it's own oil pump which uses power. 

[annv]

It cost me £5000=00 to have gas supply to my bungalow i wonder how much it would have been to have a vertical heat pipes installed in stead, which would give me free heat less a bit of electricity now gas is going up it would have made sense, certainly the solar panels i had fitted have paid for them selves in six years i now get free electric and the cost of  gas paid for from the Fit payments ( or i did until the new price of gas cuts in) Being able to foretell the future is rather difficult. John  

[Bikertov]

8 minutes ago, grendel said:

... on top of that all those teams would be spending half their time trying to find somewhere to charge their electric vans near the work sites.

Best quote of the day 

[Mouldy]

42 minutes ago, annv said:

It cost me £5000=00 to have gas supply to my bungalow i wonder how much it would have been to have a vertical heat pipes installed in stead, which would give me free heat less a bit of electricity now gas is going up it would have made sense, certainly the solar panels i had fitted have paid for them selves in six years i now get free electric and the cost of  gas paid for from the Fit payments ( or i did until the new price of gas cuts in) Being able to foretell the future is rather difficult. John  

Taken from the same website as I posted information from earlier

As was also detailed, cost would be affected by the ground your property is built on and it’s suitably for a vertical borehole:

[BroadAmbition]

Buying / installing solar panels for our hovel was the best move we ever made.  Second best move was switching over to a hybrid inverter along with Lithium storage batteries.  The savings on our electricity bills are huge, Ok, so I had to convert the whole house / garage over to LED lighting, we had to change the way we live / consume electricity too, that is power hungry units such as washing machine, diswasher etc are only used during daylight hours. Septembers elec bill for our house was precisely minus 24p, Gas - £3:31,  They knocked the -24p off the gas bill sow we owed them £3:07, water was £20:00 so total bill for the month for all three services combined was £23:07 - I can live with that

The water bill will decrease as MrsG will no longer be watering the garden until spring next year.  The gas bill will increase as we commence using the central heating once more, the elec bill will stay about the same - Zero-ish.  But when the feed in tariff is taken into account £1500 - £2k per year - Happy days

I am nowadays toying with the idea of either an air sourced or ground sourced heat pump, if we go ahead with that, then I will changeover the gas hob to a convection unit

Griff

[annv]

I Guess banning/not using gas would be for housing estates where the vertical boring can be done for a number of houses which would lower the cost certainly the provision of gas pipe to my property they just needed a survey and a cheque, i did consider heat sauce as i had under floor heating but didn't want any noisy fan next to back door, with cost of gas increasing it may pay me to change to heat sauce, time will tell. John