Norfolk Broads Petrol And Diesel Boats To Be Phased Out.

[CambridgeCabby]

It is a shame that now they have perfected the Diesel engine to such a degree that it is cleaner and more efficient than ever before the powers that be have decided to phase them out so rapidly before a realistic alternative has been perfected , we have all seen a major shortage in new cars and spare parts for existing cars over the last couple of years , with lithium being a relatively scarce commodity I can see a major shortage occurring in the not too distant future thereby inflating greatly the costs and availability .

[OldBerkshireBoy]

There is a world wide shortage of chips and new vehicles have many fitted hence the knock on effect in the production lines.

[grendel]

its not as if diesel engines were originally designed to run on peanut oil, rather than fossil fuel, the issue is more that they have perfected these engines so far now that they can no longer run on neat vegetable oil, which lets face it is an almost infinitely renewable resource.

[rightsaidfred]

26 minutes ago, grendel said:

that should read that they can economically provide, spend enough money and you can get electricity anywhere.

Including the moon 

Fred

[floydraser]

They've not only perfected diesel engines, it's the diesel itself too. It used to be thicker and froze in the winter. There was (is?) more of it per quantity of crude oil so it was cheaper until "Two Jags" decided it was killing us all.

Maybe we need to develop better vegetables? 

Another solution from history: shove two nails into a lemon? 

[grendel]

11 hours ago, floydraser said:

Another solution from history: shove two nails into a lemon? 

at 0.1W per lemon, thats going to require a whole bunch of lemons to power a boat, then there is the lemon storage at the moorings, and the daily chore of poking in the nails to connect them, thats about 12000 lemons a day, just to replace a single leisure battery, I dont think thats quite practical, at 1 nail a second, it would take 6 1/2 hours a day just to connect all your lemons

[grendel]

whats more you will also need to discconnect the nails (6 1/2 hours), then unload 600kg of lemons, and load 600kg of lemons - every day, thus you are not going to get a lot of time for cruising.

[Smoggy]

13 hours ago, rightsaidfred said:

Including the moon 

Fred

No problem, solar! There's no clouds to worry about so output is completely predictable.

[floydraser]

1 hour ago, grendel said:

whats more you will also need to discconnect the nails (6 1/2 hours), then unload 600kg of lemons, and load 600kg of lemons - every day, thus you are not going to get a lot of time for cruising.

Luckily, I have time on my hands. OK, I admit the theory needs more work but I feel we're making progress as you haven't dismissed it out of hand. What if I used large, U shaped staples to form a battery of lemons? 

[marshman]

As pointed out elsewhere, an excellent case of "greenwashing" with the paper quoting an opinion out of context!

EDP getting hold of the wrong end of the stick and people not reading wots wrote!!!!!!

[oldgregg]

18 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

A friend of mine has a Mercedes A class and gets 900 plus miles from a tank.

I often hear this sort of claim made by many car/van owners and it is totally pointless unless we are told how big the tank is!!

I.E - Put a big enough tank in a vehicle and 1000 miles is easily achievable even if only managing 20mpg - Sheesh

Griff

An A Class isn't going to have a very big tank - 50 litres tops. They're using Renault diesel engines which are fairly efficient, though obviously not great from an engineering perspective.

[grendel]

1 hour ago, floydraser said:

What if I used large, U shaped staples to form a battery of lemons? 

for optimal performance one end would need to be copper and the other zinc.

but just going through the exercise shows how the logistics involved dont really work, similarly getting the electric posts at all moorings and changing over to electric motors cant be made to add up as far as the broads is concerned effectively all the same arguments as lemons apply.

[JanetAnne]

Can we not grow bigger 'super lemons'?

We could perhaps call them hybrid lemons and the propulsion system a hybrid drive? 

[Bikertov]

3 hours ago, grendel said:

whats more you will also need to discconnect the nails (6 1/2 hours), then unload 600kg of lemons, and load 600kg of lemons - every day, thus you are not going to get a lot of time for cruising.

But just think of all the milk you could save, along with the corresponding dairy herds producing methane, as you would effectively have an endless supply of lemons to make lemon tea, instead of tea with milk.

And endless lemons for lemon drizzle cake ...

And lemon curd for lemon meringue pies ...

[Smoggy]

Just lend the boats to Grendel and he'll phase out the diesel engine, or at least a con-rod.

[OldBerkshireBoy]

28 minutes ago, JanetAnne said:

Can we not grow bigger 'super lemons'?

We could perhaps call them hybrid lemons and the propulsion system a hybrid drive? 

GM modified lemons the size of pumpkins perhaps.

[floydraser]

I think I see a profit in this: I'll write up our findings here in the form an article on lemon powered boats and have it published in the EDP, they're bound to fall for it.

[grendel]

46 minutes ago, floydraser said:

I think I see a profit in this: I'll write up our findings here in the form an article on lemon powered boats and have it published in the EDP, they're bound to fall for it.

you could enter the idea into the Broads Authorities Alternative power competition, its bound to be a winner- after all as Sherlock Holmes would say- its a Lemon Entry my dear Watson

[Bytheriver]

1 hour ago, grendel said:

you could enter the idea into the Broads Authorities Alternative power competition, its bound to be a winner- after all as Sherlock Holmes would say- its a Lemon Entry my dear Watson

Maybe a member with the right skills and a knowledge of the Broads could work out where there may be a power supply near to locations where NEW moorings could be provided with enough power for overnight charging. Would go someway to resolving two issues & I am sure funding could be found - I have in mind supplies to pumping stations as well as lines under or over rivers? 

Genuine blue sky question

 

[grendel]

the southern rivers will be difficult, but there should be some win areas, any new moorings near norwich could probably be viable, pumping station supplies tend to be single supplies due to the voltage fluctuations and surges caused by the pumps starting, they also tend to already be on long runs of cable as the pumps dont care as much if the voltage is a bit low. I have access to some of this information through work, but it would be a very time consuming process, easy enough to ascertain whether there is nearby supply, above my paygrade to ascertain available capacity. for that you are generally in the realm of asking the incumbent DNO (and they charge for such information)

[MargeandParge]

10 hours ago, grendel said:

whats more you will also need to discconnect the nails (6 1/2 hours), then unload 600kg of lemons, and load 600kg of lemons - every day, thus you are not going to get a lot of time for cruising.

Does MM have lemon in his small libations. If so waste problem solved

Kindest regards Marge and Parge 

[Mouldy]

4 hours ago, Bytheriver said:

Maybe a member with the right skills and a knowledge of the Broads could work out where there may be a power supply near to locations where NEW moorings could be provided with enough power for overnight charging. Would go someway to resolving two issues & I am sure funding could be found - I have in mind supplies to pumping stations as well as lines under or over rivers? 

Genuine blue sky question

 

The other small issue to overcome would be the willingness of the landowners to rent such chunks of riverfront to the BA on long leases at a reasonable cost.  I would imagine that this alone would make the viability of the idea a non-starter.

[Vaughan]

A hire boatyard would have to have enough power points - and a supply - to charge all of their fleet on a turn-round day, so it follows that other hire boats could call in during the week and use their facilities to charge up overnight.

If there were still over a hundred boatyards, all over the Broads, all offering overnight moorings to each other's boats, there is no doubt electric propulsion would probably work.  But all those yards are not there any more!

So if we are left with just the big yards, two in Wroxham and one each in Horning, Potter and Stalham, that is nowhere near enough infrastructure and excludes the south rivers altogether.  They would be excluded anyway as I am still convinced that it would not be safe to navigate the lower Bure and Yare across Breydon, in a pure electric hire boat.

[Vaughan]

If you really want to "go for it" I have seen a genuine hybrid hire boat, about 13 years ago.  It was built in Eastern Europe on behalf of Le Boat and I saw it when it had just been delivered to the Camargue.  It consisted of a powerful electric motor, about the size of a 13kg gas bottle, connected direct to the prop shaft.  A big turbo diesel was attached to the other end of the motor by a form of dog clutch, engaged electrically.

In this way it could drive on electric motor from a large bank of batteries; or with the motor clutched in it would become a direct drive diesel.  In this mode, the "back EMF" from the free running motor would provide current to charge the batteries, in the same way as a dynamo.  The engine could also be run disengaged, to act as a battery generator when on a mooring.  I was told there was a sensing arrangement so that if the batteries got too low when on electric drive, the engine would clutch in automatically in the same way as a hybrid car.

At the same time, a large array of solar panels all over the roof provided enough power (in the Mediterranean sun) to drive the boat at about 5KPH without the batteries. It also had two connections for shore power, to charge both propulsion and domestic batteries.

All this required an enormously complicated array of switchgear and regulation including a plug-in for set up and control by a lap top computer. Even the builders could not get the thing to work properly and in the end, it had to go out on hire as a normal direct drive diesel.

Like so many other things, a very good idea but it didn't work in practice.

[RS2021]

Any new technology starts out expensive and for 'early adopters' who are prepared to put up with its quirks and deficiencies. At this stage they either get ironed out or the technology fails. I'm not too worried about the practicalities of electric propulsion for the broads, because it will only happen if and when the issues identified have been resolved. I believe that there is sufficient going on in the general area of electric propulsion (both on land and on water) for these issues to be ironed out at some point. 

On the canals, many new private narrowboats are now hybrids and a small number are starting to creep into hire fleets. I believe Barnes have hybrids in their fleet on the broads. There is even one canal hireboat recently launched which is totally electric and claims to last a week on one charge. Heating is by water sourced heat pump. It is compact and quirky and I suspect falls into the category of developmental, but it is there. One day the issues will be ironed out and we will wonder what all the fuss was about.

If you don't believe that electric propulsion will succeed and there is a need to phase out fossil fuels, then the Broads has always had the answer and even has hire fleets specialising in it