Bargebuilder

7Kw, even on the roof of a 45 to 50ft NB? I lived on an off grid barge for a number of years and in my experience, winter output from my solar panels could be a miserable as 10% of that produced on a sunny summers day. Things must have improved a great deal if a panel that yields 7Kw in summer can now manage 2Kw in the depths of winter.

I hope they are more efficient than them😁

Wide beams great, big NBs less so, little NBs probably not, grp cruisers, not a chance. If you like to cruise every day of your holiday and do 5 plus hours on each of them as many do, you are going to struggle until that charging network is complete.

I know what you mean, but we can be profligate with water and easily last a week and where we know water is hard to find, we can eke it out to two weeks without smelling too badly! If you need to charge every couple of days and unoccupied charge points are more than that apart, you are going to be in trouble. This will make the lesser used canals even less popular.

I wonder how they inspect an underground tank that's partly full of propane. No wonder it's expensive!

Distribution is as important as numbers. The system could end up with the well travelled and 'popular with hirers' canals being well served, but the less popular waterways having so few charging points that cruising them becomes difficult or maybe impossible. It may prove difficult to encourage investment in charging infrastructure where a decent return is not guaranteed.

I do hope so: I've had so many different types of boat in my time and had so much fun pottering on the water. What a shame it would be if the younger generation are deprived of the hobby. Boats can indeed be nursed along to last for very, very long times, as too can diesel engines. We can only hope that HVO will be available and affordable as a diesel replacement when the time comes.

I'm not sure that anyone could estimate how many waterside pubs would invest in electric charging points for boats, I just don't think that in the scheme of things, it would contribute much to the total requirement. Surely you agree? As a discussion forum, where better to ask people like you who have a much better grasp of the subject than I, about how to solve the problems that might occur when the changeover to electric boating happens?

That's certainly a possibility. I'm so glad that I've lived in an age of cheap, plentiful fuel, cheap foreign holidays and travel in general. I wonder if, in not so many years time, buying an inexpensive boat and pushing off for a couple of months and a few hundred miles of cheap cruising will be a thing of the past. Owning or even the hiring of boats will be the preserve of the very few, even fewer than now!

Indeed you would, and waterside pub charging points would help, but make no real impact on the total numbers required.

I agree totally, but given such restrictions for privately owned boats, such charging stations could only be viewed as a bonus if available, rather than relied upon as part of a planned cruise.

I too would think that, but I am always surprised how many waterside pubs and restaurants don't even supply a place to moor. Many have rotting, once used but never maintained dangerous moorings and some even have 'No Mooring' signs. I can only conclude that mooring infrastructure costs, let alone charging point costs, can't be justified by additional meal and drinks income generated. There are exceptions of course that presumably do work well for hospitality businesses. Possibly, but I suspect that most, if not all private boaters would prefer to charge at night and travel by day too.

How would a priority system work? I can't see first to book, first served working. When a privately owned boat tries to book, how could the 'system' know if a hirer with priority was about to try to book the same time slot? Hire companies couldn't afford to irritate their hirers by selling their valuable charging slots to 'outsiders' to make a bit of extra cash.

I can certainly see, where a number of hire companies ply their trade near to each other, that they would forge an agreement to share charging points amongst all of their customers. I can also see that several hire companies could join forces to dot charging points around their locality for the benefit of their customers and the mutual benefit of their businesses. What I struggle to see happening, is that such a valuable business asset would be shared with private boaters to the detriment of their own hirers.

You are right there, I had no idea that there was such a range of prices. I suppose the relevant point is, how much could a commercial company earn from a NB charge point in a year? I think the consensus is that 'slow chargers' are likely to be the best we could hope for. There will never be too many charge points, so we could assume that each would enjoy at best one overnight (3pm to 9am) and one daytime charge each 24 hrs, at least for 3 months. For another 6 months at perhaps an average of one charge each day and for 3 months almost zero charges. How much profit could be made in a year and how many years would it take for a commercial company to reap any reward?

You don't think that hire companies would prefer to keep their charging points clear for when their own vessels pass and need charging? Does the electric NB company in Wales let non-hirers use its charging points; I'm guessing not. If like them, other hire companies dot charging points around the cut to service their own fleet, are they really likely to want them hogged by privately owned NBs, especially if they are 'slow charge' points?

Do you think so? A lot of hire bases, although they have bulk diesel, won't even sell that to passing boats. Others don't even allow mooring on their limited canal side space. They will only bother if they can make a substantial return on the electricity sold. How much more does car charging electricity at commercially operated stations cost, compared to that that we buy for our domestic properties?

Use Marine 16 instead then. 😁

Very effective: they used one on the HMS Sheffield and that has never had diesel bug since.

We too live in a rural village with no mains gas. We don't currently use propane, but the house opposite has a propane bulk cylinder buried under the front lawn, so the delivery driver lifts a small plastic hatch cover and fills it from there; very discreet.

That's 14p per kWh: I might bin my electric stove at home and cook on propane.

You have astonishingly missed the point I was making; it was such a simple point too!

So true, but looking at it from the point of view of the boat with a crew member, they can't win either. Either they do all the work whilst watching the single hander do nothing, or they suffer taking longer to pass through locks if the single hander helps. Unless the single hander is agile, proficient and practiced of course.

My wife helms our little NB through locks, we never tie to anything, even in double locks, unless forced to do so by a lock keeper. I always open all paddles fully straight away and my wife, with no drama, keeps the boat central with little effort. Anything single handed or extra long may well struggle.

My experience of volockies, is not that they act dangerously, but quite the opposite, they can be too cautious. They discourage walking across gates, make you open both gates before entering a double lock, lift the paddles half way etc. Sharing with single handers can also be slow and frustrating if you are in a hurry, as they have a lot more to be careful about and seem in general to be creep along and pass through locks really slowly.