IanD

This happens if the post you're replying to is not on the last page of the thread; when you click "submit reply" it actually does get posted to the end of the thread but you don't see it, so click again and again, and it gets reposted each time...

The canals/rivers are no different to the railway TOCs or the water companies; if CART can't meet their legal obligations/balance the books or get sued out of business or go bust, ownership and financial responsibility will revert to the government -- which as we've both said, is the last thing they might want. Or at least, this was clearly the case with the Tories -- following the rail/water privatisation fiascos Labour seem to be leaning towards the view that the government should be responsible for national infrastructure rather than the private sector, which some would say should always have been the case... 😉

One reason for the low solar yield is very probably because while out cruising and moored in visitor moorings where there may be little choice of spaces (so you have to take what you can get) you inevitably spend a fair amount of time in full or partial shade, as opposed to full unshaded sunlight which is what all the solar panel yield calculators use. For example, in our recent trip earlier this month we averaged just under 3kWh/day in mixed weather, but in the week since we got back with the boat moored in the (unshaded) marina it's been averaging almost double that -- three days have been around 6.5kWh/day, compared to the highest days we saw in a fortnight's cruising which were around 4kWh/day. So my assumption that average yield in summer would be about 7kWh/day (2.1kW of flat-mounted panels) might be true if you're moored up with no shade, but will be too optimistic if you're actually moving round the system -- certainly while cruising, but also when moored unless you're lucky with where this is. Across all trips in the last year, actual solar yield per day comes out at 68% of the predicted value (3.2kWh/day vs. 4.6kWh/day) -- so as if I had only 1.4kW of panels not 2.1kW... 😞 (and the gap was even bigger in summer, only 58% of predicted...) P.S. Predicted yield from https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html#api_5.2

Can anyone in the marina spare literally a couple of minutes to do a small favour for me? If so, please PM me... 😉

Yes it should, but not so positive if after restoration they dump the maintenance costs on CART and make their financial problems even worse. Especially in the longer term when stuff like lock gates starts to reach end of life, like is happening now on the Rochdale and HNC(and K&A?) And if CART don't take this on, who does? Maintenance and repairs aren't as sexy as reopening a canal, but are just as essential if it's to *stay* open...

The point about bug-fixing/making improvements is that this knowledge is then available for subsequent builders/boaters, especially if it's just configuration/software issues -- and yes, I've had several of these too. If you do what I did and dive into something relatively early in the rollout, you're more likely to encounter such issues -- if you want to play safe, wait until all the early adopters like me have shaken all the gremlins out before jumping in... 🙂 What I'd certainly suggest before adopting *any* new technology -- for example, electric/hybrid boats -- is going with a supplier who has already built/debugged a decent number of them, has found out what does and what doesn't work (and modified what they build as a result), doesn't cut corners to try and save money, and is not going to walk away from problems. The time for cost-reduction (and possibly corner-cutting...) is after something has been established and is out there and debugged in the real world; new technology always costs more when it's introduced, and the early adopters pay for this.

Honestly speaking I think some of the restoration groups are misguided -- getting a canal reopened is brilliant, but where does the money come from to maintain it afterwards? Without this they will just add to CART's long-term costs, especially if the restoration suffered from penny-pinching like happened with the HNC and Rochdale -- both of which I love (and have *never* suggested should close!), but not many other boaters seem to going by numbers using them, and they're now becoming increasingly expensive to maintain and stoppage-ridden... 😞 The BCN wasn't my suggestion, but it was one of the few realistic options for (partial) closure last time we had this discussion. I love the BCN (though not many people use much of it...), I haven't done as much of it yet as I'd like to but plan to change this in future -- maybe even including the BCN challenge if I can persuade a suitable crew 🙂 I wasn't saying that every single CART manager was justified, I expect they have reasons for having them all but maybe some judicious pruning is needed. However wholesale fat-cat/manager accusations from people like Alan don't seem justified -- yes CART is different from other charities, they have a lot more involvement with a huge amount of historic infrastructure which needs maintenance, if anything I'd expect them to need proportionally more managers than most other charities since a large part of the physical work is now subcontracted instead of swelling employee numbers. In spite of that the number of "highly-paid managers" is similar to other similar-sized charities, which suggests they're not wasting vast amounts of money on "fat cats", however stupid some of the job titles seem. Where do you think the "more people on the ground, often cheaper" are going to come from? If you mean volunteers, they can't realistically do any maintenance/rebuilding which carries risks given insurance/liability today, so they can only do "menial" stuff like undergrowth clearing or painting -- which of course is valuable and needs doing, but it doesn't replace lock gates or paddles. If you mean rebuilding a direct labour force instead of subcontracting, this doesn't make sense -- companies don't use subcontracting because they're Tories who believe the private sector is superior, they do it because it's cheaper and easier to manage (clue -- needs fewer managers...).

I meant a stoppage, not a closure -- now corrected. Very good question. I would think that CART would be sued -- possibly by a joint case from canal users, maybe FBW backed by all their supporters? -- under breach of contract, and told by the courts that they have to meet their legal obligations. If they don't -- because they can't financially -- then eventually the government will have to carry the can if CART go bust or fail to meet their obligations. Which would then put the government back on the hook for everything once again, so I expect they'd realise it was much cheaper to bump up the DEFRA grant -- and tell CART to raise license fees by a good chunk... 😞 Right now the government is presumably aware of CART's problems, they've been told often enough, but they still see it as Somebody Else's Problem. A lawsuit would bring the chickens home to roost... 😉

That's exactly why I posted the results 🙂 In spite of all my careful planning I'm not sure it's as close to optimum as possible just yet, there's still some way to go with the generator/charging setup but I'm confident this can be resolved. I'm an engineer so I'm not at all surprised that everything wasn't 100% perfect from the word go, with a new project like this there are always going to be some teething troubles which don't become obvious until after using it for some time. It should also be pointed out -- which should be clear from the numbers -- that the advantages of such a boat are bigger if you don't do a lot of cruising hours away from your mooring, like going slowly, and mostly use it in summer, so that more of the power comes from solar. If you want to travel at diesel boat speeds for 8 hours a day every day to get one of the harder-work cruising rings done in a week, you're going to use a lot more power, and a lot of it is going to have to come from the generator running more hours per day. Still has advantages, but they're reduced. That's reality as opposed to rose-tinted "electric boat" glasses... 😉 My boat is and probably always will be a luxury, which like many other things is nice if you have the money to spare; if you want value for money, either buy a much cheaper secondhand boat or do what I've done for many years and hire, depending on how much time you plan on spending onboard... 😉

That is exactly the problem, the current has to be kept down to keep the canal usable for navigation. The Llangollen is a relatively small feeder as far as water capacity goes, much more is needed for the proposed transfer scheme, and one decent-sized pipeline could transfer far more water than the GU unless it was widened (impossible) or dredged back to much closer to its original depth (very difficult) or the water level raised by building up edges (ditto). The numbers in the documents sound big (115M litres!) but these are still pretty small compared to the demand, or the amount that would need to be transferred to make a significant difference. I would love to see some real numbers based on realistic assumptions for all these factors, rather than the vague handwaving optimism which is all that they seem to have right now. If it does turn out to be feasible and cost-effective then of course it would be a great idea, but I expect after proper analysis the idea will fade away and disappear, like last time it was proposed...

There have been many discussions about this on CWDF, which came to the difficult/expensive conclusion. To close cruising waterways -- which could save significant sums -- needs an Act of Parliament, and the chances of this happening are close to zero given other more pressing government business. If they're not closed, CART have an enforceable legal obligation to keep them open and fit for navigation, so they can't just deliberately run them down. These account for most of the canal system, about 80% IIRC. Closing some of the expensive-to-maintain little-used "remainder" canals which were reopened at the end of the last century like the Rochdale and HNC would mean CART paying tens of millions of pounds back to the bodies which funded their restoration, and the cost of this would far exceed the savings from closing them. That's not speculation, it's information straight from the horse's mouth -- a poster on here who was actively involved on the contract negotiations. This would also kick in if they were "de-facto" closed by running them down, since the grants were made on the condition that the canals are kept open and fit for navigation for many years from the date of reopening (50? 60?). There are a few remainder canals which are little-used and could probably be run down and/or closed without too much protest (e.g. bits of the BCN), but these only form a tiny part of the network and are not usually the expensive-to-maintain ones with lots of locks, so the money saving would be pretty small. As it stands CART do prioritise the most popular canals for maintenance, both planned and emergency, because a closure stoppage on a canal like the Llangollen or T&M (~6000 boat movements per year?) has a far bigger impact on boaters and hire companies than on one like the HNC (~300 boat movements per year?). But there doesn't seem to be any realistic way they can save a significant amount of money by closing canals, so without a change to their financing (bigger DEFRA grant, higher license fees) the system will continue to slowly deteriorate and the number of unplanned stoppages will continue to rise... 😞 This is something that Fund Britain's Waterways are trying to stop by pushing for more government support, but the other side of the coin (higher license fees) is being strongly resisted by many boaters -- who have been paying too little for many years, but have got used to this, hence the rise in the number of CMers in recent years... 😞 Boaters hoping/claiming that closures can/will avoid this increase are doing the same as those who thing that sacking Richard Parry or sacking "fat cat mangers" or getting rid of blue signs or bringing back a direct workforce will fix CART's problems -- they won't, but it stops people being forced to admit what the real problem is, which is (at least partly) partly that they are paying too little for their boating.

We moored there too. Visitor moorings in/near Saltaire are not exactly common or good... 😞

Yes I know, but the devil is in the details -- just which kind of panels were they, and more importantly how were they fitted and connected? A "semi-flexible" panel (which type?) loosely attached to the roof (e.g. double-sided tape) and with vulnerable topside connectors is a different beast to the almost-rigid ones (maximum bend radius about 3m IIRC) with a composite aluminium/glassfibre backing plate and robust backside connectors, vacuum-bonded directly down to the roof. This is what the hybrid boatbuilders like Finesse (and others) use, but a large part of what makes them reliable is how they're fitted, which is not something that can easily be done by inexperienced/amateur fitters as a retrofit onto an existing boat. AFAIK these panels fitted like this have shown no reliability problems over a large number of boats over several years. As I've said many times, having a new boat built for part-time/holiday use is a luxury which makes little or no financial sense, an expensive hybrid boat even less so -- hiring would be considerably cheaper. But then you can't hire boats like mine, certainly not one with the kind of features I wanted, and my kids who probably couldn't afford more than two grand a week to hire a boat in summer can use it "free". Being able to choose when to go away on it and change your mind at short notice (instead of booking a year ahead) is also a huge advantage. And personally speaking, I'd rather have the money used for all this (and helping support UK boatbuilders and businesses) than sitting in the bank or being invested in property or wasted on an expensive bright red Italian car that spends most of its time stuck in traffic... 😉 That's interesting. The comments about heat are -- in my opinion! -- not really correct, if you look at how panels heat up (and are cooled). Flat panels are heated up by the sun and get pretty hot, they can only lose that heat by radiation (ineffective at these temperatures) or convection (less effective in still air) -- mounting them above the roof helps keep the roof cool but means the panels run even hotter, try touching one on a summer's day. Remember that with 1kW/m2 incoming light in summer, about 200W ends up as electricity which means 800W ends up as heat... 😞 Semi-flexible panels bonded directly to a steel roof (typically 4mm thick?) can dump some of the heat into the roof which is a pretty good heat conductor, this then carries heat to the sides and down the cabin walls. It's not an especially good cooling path but it's better than dangling a flat panel in free air. But for this to happen (and not flex, see below...) you need a continuous adhesive bond line under the panels, not just a few stripes to hold it in place -- which IIRC is what some of the suppliers recommend... 😞 Next time I'm on the boat on a sunny day I'll point a laser thermometer at the panels on my roof and a boat next door with flat panels and see which is hotter, and I'm confident that the flat panels will be hotter. For the panels to not delaminate -- which is always a possibility! -- they need to be kept as rigid as possible, which bonding directly to the steel roof does. Putting a relatively flexible plastic panel (not even solid!) like the one pictured underneath them increases the chance of flexing/movement either over temperature or when being walked on, and I would have thought is a bad idea rather than a good one -- and it will also make the panels run hotter unless you actively blow cool air through the channels. This whole problem is quite similar to issues I deal with at work on a regular basis regarding cooling and temperature cycling of things that get hot (silicon chips) connected to rigid metal plates (heatsinks -- usually with fins...) to keep them cool, with some adhesive/thermal interface material in between, where temperature and reliability depends on understanding how all the different elements interact as they heat up and cool down -- and the answer is not always immediately obvious, and things that look like a good idea at first glance often turn out not to be. If in spite of all this the panels start to delaminate in a few years like Ampere's then I'll admit I was wrong and replace them (hopefully under guarantee) -- but even if I have to pay, the cost of this will still only be a tiny fraction of the annual cost of running the boat, never mind buying it in the first place... 😉