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Future of electric canal boats


IanD

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10 minutes ago, IanD said:

The traditional/historic/fuel boat issue needs sorting too. Suggestions on a postcard...

A fuel boat is typically an ex working boat. How much charging power can it carry? Just weighed an 18650 battery, 2600mAHr at 3.6V as 50g, which suggests a working boat with a 30 ton cargo capacity can carry up to 5.6MWhrs of charge! Others will have a better idea of the weight of big batteries.  A lot wrong with these estimates, but it suggests a possible future for fuel boats; going out to those away from charging posts, or who have run out of juice between them. It would cost a fortune at present battery costs to fit out a fuel boat with significant capacity. Boaters would still likely need fuel for much of the year for heating and cooking. Possibly wood, or biomass. A lot less volume dense than coal, so more frequent runs of the boats needed. No idea how the economics of this work out. It is a precarious way to make a living even today.

Jen

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15 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

The bulk of the infrastructure costs surely must be borne by the licence payer??

 

Grants from general taxation would I think be limited at best. The perception of the general public would be that they were subsidising a relatively wealthy persons leisure pursuit. I'm not saying that perception is correct but that is how politicians and the people will see it. It also ignores those that live on their boats.

 

They would view it differently from building a network to support vehicle charging for example.

 

So sadly I can see a big rise in licence costs on the horizon.

Simple question -- why?

 

The cost of installing many of the car fast charging stations (motorways, main roads, garages) isn't borne by the license payer (or the government), it's paid for by customers -- and indirectly the investors on the businesses who fund the install in return for long-term revenue/profit. Same for supermarkets. Installations at kerbside and lampposts may be paid for by councils or the electricity companies, I'm not sure which. Or the government might pay because they want to reduce emissions and help with climate change.

 

There are some places where there's an obvious business model to pay for the charging stations, hire boat bases is one. There will be other which can make profit either from selling the power (houses next to the canal) or other services/goods while to boats are charging (canalside pubs/shops/supermarkets).

 

Any other relevant ideas?

Edited by IanD
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For a start, ban all privately owned brutish 2-3 ton 4x4's and enormous so called prestige cars with stupidly enormous engines and turbo's, especially the diesels that polute heavily and block and jamb up the roads and car parks. You rarely see more than a little driver in these horrid great things trying to look important. In most cases a little 1 litre 3 cylinder car does the job just as well.   I've just bought 1 litre Susuki Alto petrol, nearly 70 mpg, zero rated road tax, it's brilliant, flies along quite merrily, can't smell a thing when I sniff the exhaust pipe. :)

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8 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

A fuel boat is typically an ex working boat. How much charging power can it carry? Just weighed an 18650 battery, 2600mAHr at 3.6V as 50g, which suggests a working boat with a 30 ton cargo capacity can carry up to 5.6MWhrs of charge! Others will have a better idea of the weight of big batteries.  A lot wrong with these estimates, but it suggests a possible future for fuel boats; going out to those away from charging posts, or who have run out of juice between them. It would cost a fortune at present battery costs to fit out a fuel boat with significant capacity. Boaters would still likely need fuel for much of the year for heating and cooking. Possibly wood, or biomass. A lot less volume dense than coal, so more frequent runs of the boats needed. No idea how the economics of this work out. It is a precarious way to make a living even today.

Jen

I didn't mean fuel boats for providing electric power, I meant fuel boats for supplying diesel to the remaining traditional/historical boats (as well as heating fuel, assuming that's not banned too). If batteries are cheap enough, maybe they could also do charge top-ups as you say -- they maybe don't need as much capacity as you'd think, depends how many boats they want to be able to change up between recharging themselves, which is probably not that many. But even 500kWh of battery will cost a fortune, and I doubt it would pay this back...

7 minutes ago, bizzard said:

For a start, ban all privately owned brutish 2-3 ton 4x4's and enormous so called prestige cars with stupidly enormous engines and turbo's, especially the diesels that polute heavily and block and jamb up the roads and car parks. You rarely see more than a little driver in these horrid great things trying to look important. In most cases a little 1 litre 3 cylinder car does the job just as well.   I've just bought 1 litre Susuki Alto petrol, nearly 70 mpg, zero rated road tax, it's brilliant, flies along quite merrily, can't smell a thing when I sniff the exhaust pipe. :)

Undoubtedly a point of view held by many (except those who drive them) but one likely to lead to some incendiary responses, and I don't see how this helps us solve the electric boats/canal problem... ?

Edited by IanD
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1 minute ago, IanD said:

I didn't mean fuel boats for providing electric power, I meant fuel boats for supplying diesel to the remaining traditional/historical boats. But if batteries are cheap enough, maybe they could also do charge top-ups as you say -- they maybe don't need as much capacity as that, depends how many boats they want to be able to change up between recharging themselves, which is probably not that many.

Yes, my example was rather extreme, but enough to charge a couple of other boats as well as keeping their own going could make sense. Coal, even smokeless, is likely to go the same way as diesel and over a similar timescale, if not sooner. Boats are unlikely to ever be as well insulated as a properly built house can be and electrical heating off batteries will flatten them faster than trying to punch the tide on the lower Trent, so burning wood, or other biomass is probably going to be the thing. Much bigger volume of storage required than coal, so more frequent runs for a fuel boat needed.

Jen

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4 minutes ago, IanD said:

I didn't mean fuel boats for providing electric power, I meant fuel boats for supplying diesel to the remaining traditional/historical boats. But if batteries are cheap enough, maybe they could also do charge top-ups as you say -- they maybe don't need as much capacity as that, depends how many boats they want to be able to change up between recharging themselves, which is probably not that many.

Undoubtedly a point of view held by many (except those who drive them) but one likely to lead to some incendiary responses, and I don't see how this helps us solve the electric boats/canal problem... ?

The little 1 lire 3 cyl engines could be marinized, they produce about 65 hp. There are modern 1 litre diesels too for boats to marinize but not as clean.

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20 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Yes, my example was rather extreme, but enough to charge a couple of other boats as well as keeping their own going could make sense. Coal, even smokeless, is likely to go the same way as diesel and over a similar timescale, if not sooner. Boats are unlikely to ever be as well insulated as a properly built house can be and electrical heating off batteries will flatten them faster than trying to punch the tide on the lower Trent, so burning wood, or other biomass is probably going to be the thing. Much bigger volume of storage required than coal, so more frequent runs for a fuel boat needed.

Jen

It all depends on the numbers for electric fuel boats. Let's say when you build a new boat the batteries cost 5 grand for 50kWh, but this makes sense because when you add on the cost of the motor and controller it's comparable to a new diesel engine. If a fuel boat added enough batteries to charge 4 other boats this would cost them 20 grand; let's say they can charge a premium for the electricity, maybe 50p per kWh so 25 quid from each boat they fill up -- but they've bought the power at 10p per kWh, so that's only 20 quid profit -- and this assumes boats will pay far higher rates from a fuel boat instead of going and charging up the boat themselves. They'd have to charge up 1000 boats to get their money back, so say 2000 to get a reasonable return. This would take a *long* time...

 

So I think electric fuel boats (meaning, for recharging other boats) won't work, the investment needed is just too big and the returns too small -- the only reason they work now is they can set up without a shed load of money, and even so people won't pay much higher prices from them than they would on land.

 

How all boats -- especially remote ones -- deal with heating in future with the drive to reduce emissions (e.g. replacing gas CH with heat-pumps) is another interesting problem that hasn't been looked at yet. Again we could say this is Somebody Else's Problem, remote houses with no grid connection have exactly the same issue, so boats will do whatever they do -- on the other hand they have big enough roof area to put a lot of solar in (and buried heat storage for winter) which boats can't do.

 

Maybe the same heat-pump technology that will be used in houses will solve the problem for boats, if you have a CoP (Coefficient of Performance) of 5 (some are up to 7) then every 1kW of electrical power is equivalent to 5kW of heating. Narrowboat heaters (Webasto etc) are usually about 4kW so would need 800W of power when running, but these don't usually run all the time -- can this just be added onto the boat power budget? We do have the advantage of a big cold heatsink nearby (the canal) which is great for heat pumps...

Edited by IanD
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4 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

Petrol and boats don't really mix though do they? 

They used to years ago, most boats including hire boats were petrol engine driven. Most folk are far less practical these days, not much inituative to deal with such things sensibly and just want to play Smartphones all the time.

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Maybe what will happen in reality is that pleasure boating or living cheaply on boats will simply be taken out of the equation as not necessary for society to function. 

 

If this climate thing does start to kick in properly then surely there will be a lot of activities which we can currently enjoy which will be sidelined in favour of those things which people actually need in order to live a normal life.

 

Boating is not one of these things. 

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Based on our BMW i3 a 7 hour charge from a 3 pin plug (2.5kw) stores approx 12 kwh, a liveaboard narrowboat with all the extras uses about 1.5 to 2 kwh daily for domestic consumption, double that to include propulsion (bit of a stab in the dark on that bit) and you have nearly a weeks supply of power. Assuming only half batt capacity is used that equates to a Nissan Leaf 24 kwh battery. Seems quite doable to me, especially with Tesla plan to massively ramp up battery production and flood the market, cheap batteries are coming. 

Edited by nb Innisfree
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4 minutes ago, bizzard said:

They used to years ago, most boats including hire boats were petrol engine driven. Most folk are far less practical these days, not much inituative to deal with such things sensibly and just want to play Smartphones all the time.

Were there ever a lot of petrol hire boats on the canals after the hire industry grew? There certainly were initially when hirers often had a background with marine petrol engines and knew the risks, but I thought that the mass-market boat hire business (on canals) was almost all diesel from pretty early on?

 

I know the same isn't true for lumpy water boats, which is why they seem to get a lot more explosions/burnings/sinkings...

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7 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Maybe what will happen in reality is that pleasure boating or living cheaply on boats will simply be taken out of the equation as not necessary for society to function. 

 

If this climate thing does start to kick in properly then surely there will be a lot of activities which we can currently enjoy which will be sidelined in favour of those things which people actually need in order to live a normal life.

 

Boating is not one of these things. 

I think you're being needlessly pessimistic. For sure boating won't be allowed to carry on as it is now, neither will driving or heating houses or shipping plastic sh*t half-way round the world the way we do, because that's what's killing the planet.

 

That doesn't mean that it can't continue and thrive in future if these issues are dealt with, just like all the other things I mentioned. In fact I'd sat that being able to glide along the canals in silence and with no vibration or smell (and with very little energy cost compared to other activities) is likely to make it more attractive to people, not less -- maybe we could end up with a golden green age of the canals?

Edited by IanD
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2 minutes ago, IanD said:

I know the same isn't true for lumpy water boats, which is why they seem to get a lot more explosions/burnings/sinkings...

 

You seem to have taken the thread off topic, so, a question.

 

What evidence is there that :

a) Lumpy water boats use more petrol than diesel engines ?

b) Lumpy water boats suffer a higher proportion of explosions / fire / sinkings ?

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1 minute ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

You seem to have taken the thread off topic, so, a question.

 

What evidence is there that :

a) Lumpy water boats use more petrol than diesel engines ?

b) Lumpy water boats suffer a higher proportion of explosions / fire / sinkings ?

Oh dear I did, didn't I?

 

So I'm not going to compound the sin by rising to your bait... ?

Edited by IanD
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2 minutes ago, IanD said:

Were there ever a lot of petrol hire boats on the canals after the hire industry grew? There certainly were initially when hirers often had a background with marine petrol engines and knew the risks, but I thought that the mass-market boat hire business (on canals) was almost all diesel from pretty early on?

 

I know the same isn't true for lumpy water boats, which is why they seem to get a lot more explosions/burnings/sinkings...

On canals mostly no, but many private cruisers, inboard and outboard petrol powered,  The Upper Thames, Norfolk Broads and rivers for petrol powered private and hire craft.

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15 minutes ago, nb Innisfree said:

Based on our BMW i3 a 7 hour charge from a 3 pin plug (2.5kw) stores approx 12 kwh, a liveaboard narrowboat with all the extras uses about 1.5 to 2 kwh daily for domestic consumption, double that to include propulsion (bit of a stab in the dark on that bit) and you have nearly a weeks supply of power. Assuming only half batt capacity is used that equates to a Nissan Leaf 24 kwh battery. Seems quite doable to me, especially with Tesla plan to massively ramp up battery production and flood the market, cheap batteries are coming. 

Bit optimistic on propulsion there, assuming 3hp to cruise slowly that would be 4kw so my figure of  2kwh for propulsion would give 30 mins cruising. 

Edited by nb Innisfree
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16 minutes ago, IanD said:

I think you're being needlessly pessimistic. For sure boating won't be allowed to carry on as it is now, neither will driving or heating houses or shipping plastic sh*t half-way round the world the way we do, because that's what's killing the planet.

 

That doesn't mean that it can't continue and thrive in future if these issues are dealt with, just like all the other things I mentioned. In fact I'd sat that being able to glide along the canals in silence and with no vibration or smell (and with very little energy cost compared to other activities) is likely to make it more attractive to people, not less -- maybe we could end up with a golden green age of the canals?

All leisure will be banned eventually ;)

 

Once you start letting the 

21 minutes ago, nb Innisfree said:

Based on our BMW i3 a 7 hour charge from a 3 pin plug (2.5kw) stores approx 12 kwh, a liveaboard narrowboat with all the extras uses about 1.5 to 2 kwh daily for domestic consumption, double that to include propulsion (bit of a stab in the dark on that bit) and you have nearly a weeks supply of power. 

I'm the world's number 1 fan of electric boats but I really don't think 2kwh will go far propelling a 50ft narrow boat. 

 

I have done some experiments with my 40x9ft canal boat and yes a 1kw pod motor will move it but you would want slightly more power on balance and obviously some people like to do more than an hour or two per day. 

 

It will be excellent when it all comes together and works, which it will. 

 

I'm sure these same discussions, optimism and pessimism were had during the transition from steam to diesel power. And probably the horses too. 

 

Silent boating (not all electric boats are silent) is definitely pleasant in a big way. 

 

I've been doing the math and I reckon for about ten grand I can fit a 4kw pod motor to the rudder, install a decent amount of lifepo4 battery and a couple of KW of solar.

 

Certain amount of DIY needed. 

 

That will give me a very effective -secondary- propulsion system which may over time become a feasible primary system.

 

However I reckon taking out the dinosaur oil unit is not sensible just yet.

 

Edited by magnetman
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3 minutes ago, nb Innisfree said:

Bit optimistic on propulsion there, assuming 3hp to cruise slowly that would be 4kw so my figure of  2kwh for propulsion would give 30 mins cruising. 

124 kwh for 4hrs cruise daily + domestic consumption would last 1 week. (70+ hrs charge from a 3 pin. 

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1 hour ago, The Happy Nomad said:

The bulk of the infrastructure costs surely must be borne by the licence payer??

 

Grants from general taxation would I think be limited at best. The perception of the general public would be that they were subsidising a relatively wealthy persons leisure pursuit. I'm not saying that perception is correct but that is how politicians and the people will see it. It also ignores those that live on their boats.

 

They would view it differently from building a network to support vehicle charging for example.

 

So sadly I can see a big rise in licence costs on the horizon.

I agree I for one would not want it because I have sorted out the problem myself, but see the need to keep boating available for the many

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3 minutes ago, magnetman said:

All leisure will be banned eventually ;)

 

Once you start letting the 

I'm the world's number 1 fan of electric boats but I really don't think 2kwh will go far propelling a 50ft narrow boat. 

 

I have done some experiments with my 40x9ft canal boat and yes a 1kw pod motor will move it but you would want slightly more power on balance and obviously some people like to do more than an hour or two per day. 

 

It will be excellent when it all comes together and works, which it will. 

 

I'm sure these same discussions, optimism and pessimism were had during the transition from steam to diesel power. And probably the horses too. 

 

Silent boating (not all electric boats are silent) is definitely pleasant in a big way. 

My latest post attempts to correct that. 

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Yes 4kw is about right I reckon which is why I got a price for an Aquamot trend 4.3 pod motor. £3k approx. Not too bad. I already own an Aquamot trend 1.1 outboard and am very happy with the product build quality. It's a good item.

1 minute ago, nb Innisfree said:

My latest post attempts to correct that. 

Yes I saw that. 

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5 minutes ago, bizzard said:

Hoist sail and choose routes so the wind is always blowing up yer jacksie to blow you along. A rapid mast lowering arrangement complete with sail for low bridges will be important, leg it through tunnels.

1 hour ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

 

Or a big wheel reaching down to the canal bed? 

 

(Unable to remove quote of the happy nomad not sure why)

Edited by magnetman
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