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peterboat

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2 minutes ago, peterboat said:

A generator running at a fixed RPM can be tuned to run at that speed most efficiently, maybe 40%, your diesel producing far to much power to run at say 3-4 mph is maybe 13-16% efficient.  It also runs all the time even in locks when it's not needed, the electric motor doesn't, the generator may only use 1 litre in the hour. 

Then it saves 25% on the licence and if it had solar the generator might only be needed a couple of times a week in summer why do you think I went to all that effort to convert mine to electric? It wasn't to throw money away that's for certain 

OK, you may (?) use one litre per hour, if so then it is roughly four times more efficient than my Isuzu, though of course I am also getting batteries charged at same time. 

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3 minutes ago, LadyG said:

OK, you may (?) use one litre per hour, if so then it is roughly four times more efficient than my Isuzu, though of course I am also getting batteries charged at same time. 

 

The generator is also charging the batteries to run the motor to propel the boat, as well as heating the water etc etc.

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16 hours ago, LadyG said:

Peter is saying a diesel genset is four times more efficient than a marine diesel engine.. I am asking how much diesel it uses in the one hour. 

 

If electric boats are going to be more economical (and practical) hire boats would be building them now, maybe they are, but as prototypes.

I'm not against electric boats it's a great idea, but at the moment it seems to me that new boats, with all bell's and whistles,  are going to attract marina based early adopters, which is fine if they are the biggest market for new boats. It's not going to be easy if they want to cruise extensively  and not use fossil fuels.

 I'm not yet convinced by the early adopters so far, folks like @peterboat are 'enthusiasts', selling the positives but ignoring the negatives.

That's not a successful long term marketing strategy imho.

 

 

If you do a detailed efficiency analysis (fuel consumption) comparing a diesel engine with the series hybrid (generator + LFP batteries) for typical canal use, you find that on average the hybrid uses about half the fuel (50% saving) of the diesel -- I've posted such an analysis on another thread (or maybe earlier in this one, I forget which). This is because the generator runs for short periods at maximum efficiency (around 25%), the diesel runs all the time at lower efficiency (20% down to much less than 10%), especially when going slowly or in locks.

 

This ignores energy input from solar, in other words it assumes that all the power comes from the generator. In summer, even when cruising all day you would expect about half the required power to come from solar, which means the hybrid saves 75% of fuel. If you only cruise for short periods each day or a couple of days per week then solar can supply all the power needed in summer, so fuel saving is 100%. In winter there's much less power from solar so the saving would drop back to closer to 50%, but there would still be a little bit of saving.

 

So from a "green" point of view hybrids make a lot of sense -- though having 35000 boats go this way makes negligible different to the planet compared to 35M cars. From a money point of view they don't make sense today, the fuel saving is there but the installation cost is so high it's doubtful that this would be paid back before the death of the owner. But that's not why people are adopting them, they're doing it to get rid of engine noise when cruising -- and possibly to salve their green conscience... 😉

 

That's the point of view not from an enthusiast like Peter, but somebody who is well aware of all the pros (and cons) of a hybrid boat but is fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay for silent cruising. Others may well think this is a waste of money, that's their equally valid viewpoint.

 

If in future charging bollards appear than that will change the picture (and economics) completely, but there's no credible plan for this 😞

Edited by IanD
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3 hours ago, IanD said:

So from a "green" point of view hybrids make a lot of sense -- though having 35000 boats go this way makes negligible different to the planet compared to 35M cars. From a money point of view they don't make sense today, the fuel saving is there but the installation cost is so high it's doubtful that this would be paid back before the death of the owner. But that's not why people are adopting them, they're doing it to get rid of engine noise when cruising -- and possibly to salve their green conscience... 😉

 

That's the point of view not from an enthusiast like Peter, but somebody who is well aware of all the pros (and cons) of a hybrid boat but is fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay for silent cruising. Others may well think this is a waste of money, that's their equally valid viewpoint.

 

If in future charging bollards appear than that will change the picture (and economics) completely, but there's no credible plan for this 😞

Nice to see a realistic view from someone who will soon have an electric boat. I’ve been out on my boat the last few months and have seen no electric boats on the canal, I have seen lots of new boaters and boats but not one electric boat(apart from passing Peter’s moorings).

  I think it is the cost of an all electric boat that people are put off by, but I like your point and it’s true, that the people who are buying them are more interested in silent boating then the eco/save the planet side and this is more of a conscious thing. There was a new buyer of an all electric boat, who visited the boat regular during the build, driving hundreds of miles in her large diesel car, also when moved aboard drove hundreds of miles visiting family/friends, they still have the car being looked after by relations. But she says she bought the boat for silent boating and the environment, maybe it will offset her diesel car and help her conscious from all the years she didn’t think about the environment, like many older retired people.

 

Edited by PD1964
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1 hour ago, PD1964 said:

Nice to see a realistic view from someone who will soon have an electric boat. I’ve been out on my boat the last few months and have seen no electric boats on the canal, I have seen lots of new boaters and boats but not one electric boat(apart from passing Peter’s moorings).

  I think it is the cost of an all electric boat that people are put off by, but I like your point and it’s true, that the people who are buying them are more interested in silent boating then the eco/save the planet side and this is more of a conscious thing. There was a new buyer of an all electric boat, who visited the boat regular during the build, driving hundreds of miles in her large diesel car, also when moved aboard drove hundreds of miles visiting family/friends, they still have the car being looked after by relations. But she says she bought the boat for silent boating and the environment, maybe it will offset her diesel car and help her conscious from all the years she didn’t think about the environment, like many older retired people.

 

 

It's not surprising you haven't seen any electric boats around, I don't know for sure but I doubt they are more than a couple of percent of boats on the canal network. Some builders like Finesse are now building nothing else, but the numbers are still a drop in the ocean.

 

I'm 100% sure it's the cost that is putting people off today, this is partly things like battery cost but this is dropping year by year -- the bigger cost (and one that is rising, +15% in the last year IIRC) is the onboard generator and installation costs. If not for this then I would expect electric boats to reach cost parity with diesels in the near future and become cheaper thereafter, exactly as EVs are going to do within the next few years.

 

But removing the generator can't happen until there are enough charging bollards, which there probably won't be until there are enough hybrid/electric boats -- which won't happen until the cost comes down, which means getting rid of the generator... 😞

Edited by IanD
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9 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Once charging bollards are in place I would expect the charging cost to be about the same as powering a diesel boat. Just like public EV chargers are now about the same cost per mile as petrol🤭

 

But even if they are, the propulsion energy use (see above) is at least 50% lower than diesel, maybe 75% lower in summer with solar, or 100% lower if moving little in summer and solar only is enough...

 

So the running cost will be lower, and the boat is essentially silent... 🙂

Edited by IanD
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25 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Once charging bollards are in place I would expect the charging cost to be about the same as powering a diesel boat. Just like public EV chargers are now about the same cost per mile as petrol🤭

Bollards or not, how many people need a £250K electric boat? The people I see buying these boats are far from your average, they are wealthy people with expendable cash. Why in all honesty would you spend that amount of money on a Narrowboat? People are more then happy to spend £50K on a boat to enjoy the canals, electric boats will be few and far between for a lot of years to come, no matter how many Bollards are put in, it’s down to that they are basically too expensive.

Edited by PD1964
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3 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

Bollards or not, how many people need a £250K electric boat? The people I see buying these boats are far from your average, they are wealthy people with expendable cash. Why in all honesty would you spend that amount of money on a Narrowboat? People are more then happy to spend £50K on a boat to enjoy the canals, electric boats will be few and far between for a lot of years to come, no matter how many Bollards are put in, it’s down to that they are basically too expensive.

I wonder how many new boats are sold every year and what the average price is?

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4 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

Bollards or not, how many people need a £250K electric boat?

You don't have to spend anywhere near that to get an electric boat. It is the same as with a diesel powered boat. There are new builds available over a wide price range. My new (this year) hybrid cost approx. £150k and the hybrid element added approx £15k compared to a diesel only.

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2 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

I wonder how many new boats are sold every year and what the average price is?

Would be interesting for a comparison with diesel and electric, have just met a couple who have just bought a new 60x12ft Euro Cruiser £140K, if your looking for a home on the water you would buy one of these and not a £250K electric. Then again it’s horses for courses.

2 hours ago, jpcdriver said:

You don't have to spend anywhere near that to get an electric boat. It is the same as with a diesel powered boat. There are new builds available over a wide price range. My new (this year) hybrid cost approx. £150k and the hybrid element added approx £15k compared to a diesel only.

Who was the builder and what engine was it? It’s like everything you can spend £150k or £300K, it’s all down to what you want, shell, engine, fit out standard, equipment????

Edited by PD1964
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27 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

Would be interesting for a comparison with diesel and electric, have just met a couple who have just bought a new 60x12ft Euro Cruiser £140K, if your looking for a home on the water you would buy one of these and not a £250K electric. Then again it’s horses for courses.

 

This has been discussed, and a Facebook page from Finesse about a year ago estimated that the cost adder at the time (probably bigger now...) was about £30k (15%?) -- but note that this is for a high-end state-of-the-art hybrid system, fitted to a high-end narrowboat. The post from jpcdriver above had half this figure (£15k) which seems small (and it was about 10% of the boat cost), but it all depends on the equipment fitted -- type and size of batteries, cost of motor and controller, size of inverter, amount of solar, size and cost of generator and installation, and so on.

 

Given that there is a much bigger difference than this between the cost of boats from different builders -- at least 50% between low-end and high-end, if not more -- this is just another choice to be made, like equipment levels and fit-out materials and cost. You could get an electric/hybrid boat from a low-end builder for less than a diesel boat from a high-end one if that's what you want.

 

I don't know how many new boats are sold each year, I expect it's no more than a thousand or so (maybe less) given the number of boats on the canals (~35000) and their typical lifespan (~35 years?), and I doubt that even 10% are electric or hybrid today, probably about half that. I know Finesse aren't making anything else and their order book is full for a couple of years, so the demand is obviously there and increasing, but the vast majority of new boats are still diesel -- and the reason is very probably cost.

hybrid cost.jpg

Edited by IanD
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1 hour ago, Loddon said:

Once charging bollards are in place I would expect the charging cost to be about the same as powering a diesel boat. Just like public EV chargers are now about the same cost per mile as petrol🤭

They arnt Julian, electric is still cheaper to run than Petrol, obviously if you go to the empty 1 squid kwh it will cost more but rapids at 40p kwh are available and slightly more expensive ones at 48p kwh equally widely available. free destination chargers and cheap destination chargers, and my personal favorite is a free rapid charger that nobody seems to know about! which is why Zapmap sometimes needs to be ignored 

55 minutes ago, jpcdriver said:

You don't have to spend anywhere near that to get an electric boat. It is the same as with a diesel powered boat. There are new builds available over a wide price range. My new (this year) hybrid cost approx. £150k and the hybrid element added approx £15k compared to a diesel only.

Is it a parallel or series setup? and batteries LAs or lithium?

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7 hours ago, IanD said:

 

If you do a detailed efficiency analysis (fuel consumption) comparing a diesel engine with the series hybrid (generator + LFP batteries) for typical canal use, you find that on average the hybrid uses about half the fuel (50% saving) of the diesel -- I've posted such an analysis on another thread (or maybe earlier in this one, I forget which). This is because the generator runs for short periods at maximum efficiency (around 25%), the diesel runs all the time at lower efficiency (20% down to much less than 10%), especially when going slowly or in locks.

 

This ignores energy input from solar, in other words it assumes that all the power comes from the generator. In summer, even when cruising all day you would expect about half the required power to come from solar, which means the hybrid saves 75% of fuel. If you only cruise for short periods each day or a couple of days per week then solar can supply all the power needed in summer, so fuel saving is 100%. In winter there's much less power from solar so the saving would drop back to closer to 50%, but there would still be a little bit of saving.

 

So from a "green" point of view hybrids make a lot of sense -- though having 35000 boats go this way makes negligible different to the planet compared to 35M cars. From a money point of view they don't make sense today, the fuel saving is there but the installation cost is so high it's doubtful that this would be paid back before the death of the owner. But that's not why people are adopting them, they're doing it to get rid of engine noise when cruising -- and possibly to salve their green conscience... 😉

 

That's the point of view not from an enthusiast like Peter, but somebody who is well aware of all the pros (and cons) of a hybrid boat but is fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay for silent cruising. Others may well think this is a waste of money, that's their equally valid viewpoint.

 

If in future charging bollards appear than that will change the picture (and economics) completely, but there's no credible plan for this 😞

My problem is I have that much solar that its difficult to judge how much I use the generator, often it was just to get hot water on the last 2 trips, winter time we are going for a few cruises so then I will be able to judge better how much its used to generate for propulsion. I do know that the genny can keep up easily with the motor when I had a play at the beginning

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7 minutes ago, peterboat said:

My problem is I have that much solar that its difficult to judge how much I use the generator, often it was just to get hot water on the last 2 trips, winter time we are going for a few cruises so then I will be able to judge better how much its used to generate for propulsion. I do know that the genny can keep up easily with the motor when I had a play at the beginning

However you have a wideboat which can fit more than 2x as much solar as a narrowboat, which makes a big difference... 😉

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2 minutes ago, IanD said:

However you have a wideboat which can fit more than 2x as much solar as a narrowboat, which makes a big difference... 😉

Probably more with the wheelhouse, If I was doing now I could easily get 6kws of solar on the roof and wheelhouse roof, which in winter wouldnt go amiss

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47 minutes ago, peterboat said:

They arnt Julian, electric is still cheaper to run than Petrol, obviously if you go to the empty 1 squid kwh it will cost more but rapids at 40p kwh are available and slightly more expensive ones at 48p kwh equally widely available. free destination chargers and cheap destination chargers, and my personal favorite is a free rapid charger that nobody seems to know about! which is why Zapmap sometimes needs to be ignored 

 

In your free charging world maybe not.

We are talking public chargers not at home charging

 

The RAC said the average cost per mile for someone limited only to rapid and ultra-rapid public chargers that are typically used at motorway services had risen to 18p, compared with 19p for petrol cars and 21p for diesel.

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/26/cost-electric-car-charging-point-uk-public-charger-by-42-percent-invasion-ukraine

 

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36 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Probably more with the wheelhouse, If I was doing now I could easily get 6kws of solar on the roof and wheelhouse roof, which in winter wouldnt go amiss

Which is why I gave the power budget numbers for a narrowboat, since this is what the majority of questions are about 🙂

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1 hour ago, peterboat said:
2 hours ago, jpcdriver said:

You don't have to spend anywhere near that to get an electric boat. It is the same as with a diesel powered boat. There are new builds available over a wide price range. My new (this year) hybrid cost approx. £150k and the hybrid element added approx £15k compared to a diesel only.

Is it a parallel or series setup? and batteries LAs or lithium?

Parallel with LAs.

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8 minutes ago, jpcdriver said:

Parallel with LAs.

Who from? Hybrid Marine are the obvious supplier, and IIRC their system costs rather more than £15k extra... (I had a quote from them last year)

Edited by IanD
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27 minutes ago, IanD said:
35 minutes ago, jpcdriver said:

Parallel with LAs.

Who from? Hybrid Marine are the obvious supplier, and IIRC their system costs rather more than £15k extra... (I had a quote from them last year)

Yes, from Hybrid Marine. Thinking again the difference was probably more around £20k, but difficult to tell exactly as I spec'ed a boat that the builder priced as a diesel boat (but incorporating many elements of an electric only boat - large invertor, solar, etc.). He then got the details from Hybrid Marine and produced the final quote. The initial difference was about £15k (£120k to £135k). As we went in to build there was an increase due to steel price increases, other supply increases and some elements of the hybrid package that hadn't been included.  However, my point still stands that you don't have to pay £250k to get an electric boat as my total was £150k.

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8 minutes ago, jpcdriver said:

Yes, from Hybrid Marine. Thinking again the difference was probably more around £20k, but difficult to tell exactly as I spec'ed a boat that the builder priced as a diesel boat (but incorporating many elements of an electric only boat - large invertor, solar, etc.). He then got the details from Hybrid Marine and produced the final quote. The initial difference was about £15k (£120k to £135k). As we went in to build there was an increase due to steel price increases, other supply increases and some elements of the hybrid package that hadn't been included.  However, my point still stands that you don't have to pay £250k to get an electric boat as my total was £150k.

Around £20k extra with LA (what size?) sounds closer to the mark. But I think most hybrids now use LFP for many very good reasons, including much shorter engine/generator running times and better efficiency, and this would add another few grand -- again, depending on battery size.

 

And today you wouldn't get your boat for £150k anyway because of recent price rises for pretty much everything... 😞

 

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3 minutes ago, IanD said:

Around £20k extra with LA (what size?) sounds closer to the mark. But I think most hybrids now use LFP for many very good reasons, including much shorter engine/generator running times and better efficiency, and this would add another few grand -- again, depending on battery size.

 

And today you wouldn't get your boat for £150k anyway because of recent price rises for pretty much everything... 😞

Yes, if starting today I would probably be looking at serial hybrid with LFP, as things have moved on from when I first planned our boat. However, I may not now be able to afford that. What I do have is a boat that would operate as an electric only boat if there were enough charging points and the 1.75kw of solar has actually performed better than I thought. Our cruising pattern tends to be between 2 and 4 hours every other day when cruising. We only run the engine on long stretches for 1-2 hours. I'm sure it could be more efficient if we had been able to afford LFP but I'm happy with what we've managed to achieve.

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50 minutes ago, jpcdriver said:

Yes, if starting today I would probably be looking at serial hybrid with LFP, as things have moved on from when I first planned our boat. However, I may not now be able to afford that. What I do have is a boat that would operate as an electric only boat if there were enough charging points and the 1.75kw of solar has actually performed better than I thought. Our cruising pattern tends to be between 2 and 4 hours every other day when cruising. We only run the engine on long stretches for 1-2 hours. I'm sure it could be more efficient if we had been able to afford LFP but I'm happy with what we've managed to achieve.

So to answer the question posted above, it looks like a modern series hybrid with lithium batteries and generator costs (fully fitted out) maybe 15% more than a diesel boat, regardless of the final cost -- which can vary a lot more than this depending on builder, components and fitout standard and equipment.

 

I doubt that you'd get a new series hybrid 60' narrowboat today for much less than £200k fully fitted after recent price rises without cutting a lot of corners, and it's certainly possible to pay half that much again...

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