jupiter1124

Who in the name of all that is holy requested a boating app?? CaRT, just fix the locks and keep the canal full. Please don't spend money on this. Software is a bottomless pit. We all know it's going to be junk, and the website already gives us the information we need.

Either I've explained badly or you have understood poorly. I tested each wire in isolation to figure out whence it came and thence it went. No chance of fire, the status quo abides just without the relay.

I was wrong about one detail on the wiring, on the one pin, there is a red and yellow wire coming off of it, but the red goes to the Eberspacher, not the battery (the other red of the battery goes to the input on the ignition key switch). So only a brown and a yellow that goes to the battery. My money is on a split charge relay somehow, where the brown and the yellow used to go to starter / domestic. No idea how the voltage sensing was done, though. I do have two alternators so @pearley's suggestion is likely, is that wiring for a split charge? @ditchcrawler's suggestion is also quite possible, because the alternator i have now doesn't need exciting, so perhaps it became redundant when whoever it was who replaced the alternator did so. I removed it and just connected all +vs together, everything still works exactly the same, so it's for something that I no longer have / use. I guess the mystery continues?

I'm cleaning up some boat wiring and I have a mystery Lucas 33ra 12V relay mounted behind my Beta control panel on my 30yr old ex black prince boat. There are three cables - a brown one going to one pin of the relay, and a red one and a yellow one both going to the other. All three cables are connected to the +ve of my battery, which of course makes the relay pointless. The coil pins look like they are connected to the ignition. My first thought is that this is supposed to be for controlling "ignition on" circuits? But I've also seen references to these relays being used as split charge relays. I'm using a battery bank made up of "dual purpose" batteries and that does both starting and domestic (I know that is probably going to cause wringing of hands on this forum but it works for me). Question is, what do you reckon this relay is for? Should I just take it out or am I missing out on some useful functionality? TIA

This is where I was going with it, but it doesn't really save you much because you have to be BSSed at the time of getting licenced, and since the bss is exactly 4 years and the licence is exactly 1 year, you can get a few "free" (uninsured) months the first time, but you will have to re-BSS directly before getting your licence in 4 years time, so you can only do that once. Excellent I'll give him a shout and tell him beerbeerbeer recommended him, cheers mate

Only recently realised my bss is several months expired. im currently on the T&M near Stone. I will need to get a certificate before I can relicence. Will the 4 years start from the expiry of the old one or the date of examination? I've been quoted 230 quid which feels high, can anyone suggest a cheaper examiner? Something like @peterboat's 180 would be nice???

Thanks for explaining, I understand what you mean now. I think there is quite a big difference between the two, though. Batteries don't themselves generate energy, so their production will always be energy negative, regardless of whether it's green energy to produce them or not. Whereas the production of fuels is always energy positive (i.e. you get out more energy than you put in). If it isn't, then it's not an economic investment! If I have 100 kJ of dirty energy and I use it to produce 1000 kJ of biofuel, that's a tenfold multiplication in the amount of energy I have, without increasing my carbon output. If I use it to produce 1000 kJ of dirty energy, that's a tenfold multiplication in the amount of energy I have, AND a tenfold increase in the carbon output. So yes I do in fact think that it is "worth it" to use dirty energy to produce clean energy from the carbon perspective, assuming of course there is more clean energy out than dirty energy in (which, unless you don't like money, will always be the case). That's why this wouldn't ever happen: One would never burn 1000 kJ of dinodiesel to produce 500 kJ of biodiesel. One might burn 500 kJ of dinodiesel to produce 1000 kJ of biodiesel, but that is still a net positive because it's 500 kJ of net clean energy! Better still of course would be use clean energy to produce fuel, as well as batteries, power the grid, and fill those batteries. We're a way off away from that but moving in that direction, and batteries are DEFINITELY part of that solution, even if we do need to bootstrap their production with some carbon emissions. ETA: I'm actually going to call myself up on this. It actually is sometimes economic to produce fuels in an energy negative scheme, either to produce niche fuels, more convenient fuels, and sometimes yes politically expedient fuels (like greenwashed ones). Hydrogen springs to mind. Biodiesel is quite possibly in that category at least in some cases.

It doesn't require net energy to make it. The production of biofuels such as HVO is still energy positive. If carbon neutral energy is used to make it, then it is indeed carbon neutral. Let's say a factory produces 1000 kJ of biofuel, and it uses 100 kJ of dirty energy to make it. The factory produced 900 kJ of net energy, 90% carbon neutral. If the factory uses 100 kJ of that biofuel's energy to make the next batch of 1000 kJ of biofuel, it has now made carbon-neutral biofuel. (If you want to be extremely technical, you can say it's now 99% carbon neutral, and the next batch will be 99.9%... so you can mathematically say it tends towards carbon neutrality. But, I think, this is pedantry rather than a helpful classification of the fuel by carbon impact). I'm feeling confused by how you think my use of the term carbon neutral would be used to describe batteries. Would you be willing to explain what you mean so that my need to understand can be met? I can understand this point of view, and there's definitely a practical aspect to this as we make the necessary changes - for now, most lorries use dirty diesel, and so transporting biodiesel by lorry means the practical usage of biodiesel isn't really carbon neutral. However, it is more helpful and more accurate to point out that while the biodiesel itself is in fact carbon neutral, it's the transportation that is the problem in this case. All the carbon sequestered in it was captured from the atmosphere, not extracted from the ground - and releasing it back to the atmosphere should not be considered a failure or a tragedy. The releasing of carbon captured recently should be considered a neutral activity. There are lots of reasons why biodiesel isn't the complete answer (land use change, expense, local pollution) but carbon emissions aren't one of them. The carbon emitted during production and transportation applies to dinodiesel too.

I guess you can call it this. I would call it fossil fuel companies promoting a misleading use of the term. Perhaps you'll find it more agreeable if I talk about carbon that's part of the carbon cycle, and carbon that's not (mineral carbon). I'm trying to shift a perspective that is common and unhelpful. No, because a forest is part of the carbon cycle and always will be, the mine is not and never will be. We should stop entertaining the idea of "offsetting" ancient carbon with carbon that's part of the carbon cycle, because it's just not realistic. The quantities are just too great and the land required is just too huge. Plus it involves trusting that the forest will remain in perpetuity. Cutting a forest down is not a neutral activity, but I would call that land use change. Burning the wood (or letting it decompose) is part of the carbon cycle. If you replant the wood continuously to replace the chopped down wood, there is no land use change, and this is a carbon neutral activity. As it shouldn't be, because we're just releasing the same carbon that we removed from the atmosphere by growing our biofuel (food). It's carbon cycle carbon. Of course if you count the agricultural machinery, the transport, etc, then no it wasn't carbon neutral, but it's unhelpful to call food carbon emitting when it's not the food's "fault", but the fossil fuel's "fault". You're pointing the finger at the wrong things. Food itself can't be anything other than carbon neutral because humans are fueled by the very same energy chemical carbon bonds that were created by the sun converting carbon dioxide into food. It does, but in theory, if you were to fuel the ships with those wood chips, then it would be carbon neutral. In the context of an extremely integrated carbon based energy economy, I guess not, but the point of the term (for me at least) is to separate out those things that would be carbon neutral if not supported by a whole bunch of peripheral carbon releasing activities. Otherwise the term isn't helpful. If I grow a broccoli in my garden, eat it, then breathe out carbon dioxide, this is a carbon neutral activity. You could of course argue that because I drove to the shop in my ICE car to get the seeds, that it isn't, and while you're technically correct, it's not helpful because it's the DRIVING THE ICE CAR that's the issue, not the growing of the broccoli. Fossil fuel companies know that conflating the two helps their case, if you can't even grow a broccoli without carbon, then what's the point in even trying to reduce carbon emissions. Heck we even breathe out carbon (!) I couldn't agree more, but that's beyond the scope of what we can do personally.

Yes, me. HVO is carbon neutral. Anyway you can see why I avoided mentioning HVO at the start of this thread as i knew where the conversation would go 😅

That's not really a useful thing to say. The fuel itself is carbon neutral. It's a wholly unreasonable standard to state that the entirety of the energy grid and transportation needs to be carbon neutral before any of the products it touch can be carbon neutral. I consider all biofuels to be effectively carbon neutral, because they are part of a closed loop carbon cycle. Grow plants - absorb carbon - burn plants - release carbon. The truth is a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic principle. Possibly there was biomass growing before the biofuel plants, and possibly that was slightly higher in carbon content (e.g. rainforests). Possibly the biofuel was created with energy derived from fossil sources. Possibly it was transported with fossil fuels. But all of those things serve to muddy the waters. The problem with your objection is that it equates HVO and mineral diesel as "both not carbon neutral", but the difference is that while both diesel and biofuel takes energy to produce and transport, burning the diesel itself is the primary source of carbon in the one, and burning the HVO does not itself contribute carbon. This is exactly the type of obfuscation that is employed by the oil companies and others with a vested interest in fossil fuels, which is why I must protest. THIS IS DONE DELIBERATELY in order to try to distract people from the basics, which is that growing and consuming biomass is ultimately carbon neutral. There's only one major contributor to carbon, and that's the mining of fossil fuels and other carbon-containing minerals (for example limestone for cement). If we ceased the mining of carbon containing minerals, carbon neutrality would naturally follow, because all other carbon is part of the carbon cycle. It's really as simple as that, so whenever I find someone talking about farming or burning wood or anything else being "bad for the environment", I try to point out that these issues are trivial in comparison to the biggest problem - that humans are increasing atmospheric carbon concentration to prehistoric levels through the release of prehistoric carbon.

Yes, it is.

Something has to suffer for carbon neutrality, whether it be the birds and wind turbines, deforestation for biofuels, or meltdown risk and nuclear. Conflating all the various "green" issues together is doing us a disservice, and it's not really that useful to compare carbon neutrality with habitats. Sad that local wildlife is suffering but that's unfortunately that's what happens when you share a planet with humans.

HVO should probably be completely exempt from all additional duty besides regular VAT. It makes no sense that a "sin tax" would be applied to discourage people from using it, since it's basically carbon neutral and much cleaner than regular diesel besides. Having said that, my understanding is that there isn't anywhere near enough HVO to meet demand even with the tax, so this would just push the prices up to similar levels. Therefore I guess no harm done, really.

In my view it was rather presumptuous and in fact unfair of them to make such a suggestion. Prior to getting my mooring, as a liveaboard continuous moorer I declared 10% propulsion, and kept detailed logs that showed that this was in fact a fair split for my usage to within around 5%. I was never investigated. Now I declare 60/40, which is close to my actual usage.