IanD

Also 1 hour later on Channel 5+1...

https://www.imdb.com/news/ni64477898/ Might be worth a watch (or recording to skip the ads), or might not...

Not convinced about the gadgets, most of them use a lot less energy than either propulsion or heating -- even the things that use a lot of power when on (kettle, toaster, induction hob, electric oven) aren't on for very long, they shouldn't add up to more than a few kWh per day. Running a full wash/dry cycle on the washer/drier also took about 3kWh. So maybe all that together (with a wash/dry every day!) needs about 1h per day of generator running (6kWh) if there's no solar, which would burn about 2.5l of diesel. In comparison I reckon a full day of normal cruising -- allowing for locks and moored boats -- typically uses 15kWh, which is several times more than "gadgets", and would need about 6l of diesel for the generator -- again, ignoring solar, which is only a couple of kWh/day typical at this time of year. The biggest fuel use in winter would be heating; mine uses about 2l/hour when the CH boiler is on but this puts out 14kW (it runs in bursts), so in winter I'd expect this to be the biggest fuel user. But if you don't burn diesel you have to burn something else, and smokeless fuel isn't much cheaper -- if at all -- given how much heat goes up the flue from a stove.

What on earth are they doing to use more than 100l of diesel per week, assuming they're not cruising all day every day with the diesel heating on 24/7?

"Remember, you are all individuals" (crowd, all together) "WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!!!" Good old Monty Python... 😉

Actually *you're* now the one misrepresenting what the LGBTQ+ community think -- which is that for *some* people sexual orientation/gender isn't really a conscious choice, it's basically the way they are, and is difficult/impossible to change by "re-education" which is why they push back against this. However for others it can change during their lifetime, in either direction -- or back and forth. It's like all the nature/nurture discussions, it turns out that there isn't one single explanation. As so often this is a complex situation to which the answer is "it depends" -- as in all the discussions about sex/gender, about which much what is said is also misinformed or just plain wrong... 😞 P.S. This isn't just another "I know all about this, I read it on the Internet" polemic, it's an opinion founded on several long face-to-face discussions with various non-cis people who actually know what they're talking about -- and I certainly didn't understand the situation before doing this, a lot of what I thought I knew turned out to be wrong -- or at least, not entirely correct... 😉

The problem is that the design features and tradeoffs and gotchas for a (more complex) hybrid/electric boat are quite different to a (simpler) diesel one -- the fact that most builders/installers understand how to make diesel boats work well hides that fact that there were many in the past which didn't, but the industry (mostly) learned from its mistakes -- and that's what's going on today with hybrid boats. Some of the things that you can get away with on a diesel -- badly matched engine/gearbox/prop, feeble/inefficient/badly designed electrical system, poor charging/battery management, poor hull design -- show up as much more obvious faults to the end user in a hybrid boat, because they matter more (less power to throw away) and have a bigger effect (higher power use/shorter range) or affect fundamental operation (the electrics!), so sloppy design/build comes back to bite you. I'm sure that another cause of problems is the " 'ow much?!?! " syndrome -- top-quality components to build such a boat (motor, generator, lithium batteries, controller, inverter/charger...) are pretty expensive, so many builders try to reduce costs and cut corners, and don't put the time and effort in to get everything debugged and working properly (or don't understand how to do this) -- the end result is a problematic boat. You could also partly blame customers who are more focused on expensive internal fittings and appearance and "woo-hoo, let's go green and fossil-fuel-free" but don't understand the real benefits of spending more on the engineering that underpins all this, so even if offered cheaper vs. more expensive components they'll choose the cheaper ones and spend the money saved on things like kitchen worktops/appliances and internal bling -- which has always been so, but you could get away with it on diesel boats... 😉 So it's not entirely the fault of the builders -- though they certainly bear a lot of the blame in some cases! -- because they're supplying what a lot of (non-engineer) customers want, a nice-looking boat with green credentials at a kind-of-affordable price. It's a bit like people buying cars which look good and are very well-equipped and cheap for what they are, but underneath (where they can't see) are penny-pinched and unreliable... 😞

Ah yes, them. Claiming solar-only (no generator) is enough even in winter, which doesn't fit with anyone's real-life experience that I'm aware of. And then offering the same solution for narrowboats where the chances of this still being true are -- well, I'd say zero. And where does the energy for heating come from, especially in winter? If you read their FAQs the implication seems to be that boaters in winter won't move and will plug into a shoreline in a marina -- or burn fossil fuels, in spite of the fact they say "fossil-fuel free". Don't get me wrong, a no-fossil-fuel widebeam (a *really* wide one...) with the roof completely covered in solar can get along just fine in summer, and in winter if plugged into shoreline (and you don't mind paying a fortune for electric heating). But that's not what their blurb suggests, *especially* the implication/suggestion that it works for solar-only narrowboats which might actually want to move around the canal system. And a stovepipe out of the cabin side certainly doesn't seem "fossil-fuel free" to me... I suspect they've run the exact wording past lawyers, but to me their website seems to sailing pretty close to misleading at best, and deception at worst. And they're not the only culprit... 😞