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Future of electric canal boats


IanD

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18 hours ago, IanD said:

FTFU ?

Didn't one of his rockets malfunction? Or was it Branson's? Or both?

17 hours ago, IanD said:

It's disappointing that in spite of having asked in my first post:

 

"I'd love to get comments about this idea -- and if you're going to find problems and pick holes in it, maybe you could try and find solutions to the problems instead of just naysaying?"

 

after four pages almost all the replies have either been naysaying with no solutions, or about cars/trucks/planes, or about where all that renewable energy is going to come from, or hydrogen power, or world politics, or why the canals are going to hell in a handbasket -- and hardly any have had any constructive suggestions at all in spite of me repeatedly pleading for this and to keep on track, which is why this has ended up in the political forum.

 

People seem more interested in complaining about how terrible this is all going to be and why [xxx -- fill in your choice] won't work or [yyy] is an idiot than actually coming up with ideas about how to perhaps fix things.

 

And there was me thinking that people on this forum might actually be interested in trying to come up with a way to make the canals better in future, how silly of me. I suppose it was to be expected, but it still saddens me ?

 

[apologies to the few positive thinkers who've posted, but you're greatly outnumbered]

The reason may just be that there is no better solution than FF. 

 

Of course that does not deal with the environmental issue so that it is perhaps more a political than a technological debate? That is, how to we trade off competing expectations? Current convenience v better(?) environment

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3 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

The reason may just be that there is no better solution than FF. 

I'm not saying there is no better solution, but...

 

when I brought Lutine over the K&A, I was running low on diesel, getting it bankside was a struggle for a variety of reasons so I drove to Marlborough and bough red diesel at Tesco there. The next load was white from my local Sainsbury.

 

It struck me that I could carry enough diesel to run for a day and a half in one hand (20 litre jerry can) and I could gather it for consumption at a distance. 

I'm not sure what the equivalent is with an all-electric boat. The efuels at least offer this convenience even if they are less efficient

 

As railway locomotion has evolved the older stock has been pushed to the quieter bits of the system, and electric traction has not reached the smaller branch lines at all, to the point where diesel trains run under the wires to serve non-electrified destinations (bear with me, this is heading somewhere) - when Finland electrified they tried to close the top end of one line rather than electrify it as they didn't want to run diesel trans just for that bit and electrification was very expensive per train.

 

On boats, the effect could well be that, for example, the Witham Navigable Drains, or the northern BCN become no go areas because the number of boats doesn't justify recharging points - you can't buy diesel in the WND either, but that doesn't matter, you can carry it in a jerry can. 

 

So that's my negative comment - my positive one is, can someone advise how much it will add to the cost of my 60th birthday present (a narrow boat somewhere between 57 and 70 feet long) if it has an electric engine rather than a diesel one (and would it need a "range extender)

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4 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

Didn't one of his rockets malfunction? Or was it Branson's? Or both?

The reason may just be that there is no better solution than FF. 

 

Of course that does not deal with the environmental issue so that it is perhaps more a political than a technological debate? That is, how to we trade off competing expectations? Current convenience v better(?) environment

As I said many times, fossil fuels are the cheapest easiest most convenient most familiar highest power smallest solution to many transport/power problems -- power generation, cars, planes, ships, motorbikes, narrowboats, tractors, mowers, you name it, it's "the best" solution from all these points of view.

 

But the world doing what is easy and cheap is the reason that climate change is happening, and general opinion is that this is A Bad Thing and we have to Do Something about it to prevent an accelerating catastrophe, and one big Something that pretty much everyone agrees needs doing is to get fossil fuels out of as many types of transport as practical.

 

If people want to take the view "this isn't my problem, I'm too old to worry about it" then they're basically putting two fingers up to everyone's children who *will* inherit the problem and saying "F*ck you, I'm alright Jack". Most people -- except those putting this view forward -- would disapprove of this attitude.

 

So having established that this is really a problem for humanity as a whole, not really a political one as such -- what is going to happen to canal boating as a consequence?

 

Lots of people keep pointing out the problems with electric boats and recharging them as if these are a big problems (they are) which we have to solve (we don't). The existing propulsion and power technology (engines, electrics, batteries) wasn't developed for canals, it was developed by the 20th century car (and digger and industrial engine) industry and we simply adapted and used it.

 

Exactly the same applies to electric boats -- yes there are plenty of issues (batteries, lithium, recharging, cost, grid capacity, where the power comes from, renewable reliability, peak current loads, cost, safe installation and maintainance of HV systems, mechanics who understand them, cost -- the list is long) but the car industry is >1000x bigger and richer and is investing billions (or tens of billions) to solve these problems -- and will undoubtedly do so because it doesn't have any choice if it wants to survive.

 

And when it's done this, we get a free ride on the back of 21st century car technology just like we did with 20th century -- the big issues are not our problem. Yes maybe hydrogen will be part of this solution too, though all the real experts think this is really only likely to take off for aircraft (see what I did there?) because while it's inefficient and expensive and nasty to generate/store/distribute/use it's the only way to cram that much energy into that small a space with that low a weight. Might also work for ships (huge amount of energy storage needed) and long-distance trucks, but the case is weaker for these. Anyway, the dead giveaway is that *all* the major car companies are putting all their money into batteries.

 

So it's pretty much guaranteed that by 2025 battery technology with 50kWh-100kWh capacity (choose what you want) will be more than competitive from all points of view (including cost and range) with IC engines for new cars, and therefore for new narrowboats. Which also pretty much guarantees that by 2030 there'll be a healthy lower-cost market in secondhand kit for retrofitting into boats owned by people with less deep pockets, and by 2035 even the dirt-cheap end of the market will be covered -- this is exactly equivalent to the market for new cars, secondhand cars, and old bangers.

 

And the beauty of it is that we don't have to do a thing, somebody else will spend billions of dollars to make it all work and be mass-produced at low cost, along with solving all the issues to do with power generation and distribution and renewables and the grid and smart charging and politics and battery disposal and lithium mining and... -- get it? The same applies to solar panels, the cost of these will continue to drop driven by the global renewables industry, we just get them nice and cheap to stick on boat roofs (with limited area...). Installation and maintenance of HV circuits will need special care (and regulation) just like gas does now -- but there will be thousands of auto mechanics who can do this because it'll all be familiar stuff to them, just like current boats are to mechanics nowadays.

 

What we should be worried about is how to get this to work on the canals, especially where they're different to cars. Examples include:

 

-- cars can drive ten miles or more to the nearest "filling station", boats can't

-- houses can put 50m2 of solar panels on their roofs, boats can't (maybe 10m2-15m2 for a narrowboat)

-- what do people who moor in the middle of nowhere do, especially in winter?

-- how would this work for hire bases and their customers, CCers, liveaboards?

-- what happens to traditional/historic boats as diesel supplies disappear?

-- do fuel boats still have enough customers to continue -- and if not, where *does* diesel come from?

-- where is charging done? how much capacity and how many points are needed, and where?

-- who pays for and installs charging points outside boatyards?

-- what happens to people who can't afford to replace their diesels with electric?

 

I'm sure people can come up with many others, but we don't need to keep arguing pointlessly about the big global and political and societal and environmental issues (which of course do need solving, but not by us) -- so let's focus on the ones peculiar to canals and try and find solutions to them, because nobody else will do it for us.

 

Any chance this plea might work this time? ?

 

[and to answer an earlier question, yes I've been on this forum a lot, but I still live in hope than one day people on it might stop arguing quite so pointlessly about things they can't (or don't need to) solve, and think about how to change things that actually matter to boaters and that we might even be able to do something about...]

Edited by IanD
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1 hour ago, IanD said:

What we should be worried about is how to get this to work on the canals, especially where they're different to cars. Examples include:

 

-- cars can drive ten miles or more to the nearest "filling station", boats can't

-- houses can put 50m2 of solar panels on their roofs, boats can't (maybe 10m2-15m2 for a narrowboat)

-- what do people who moor in the middle of nowhere do, especially in winter?

-- how would this work for hire bases and their customers, CCers, liveaboards?

-- what happens to traditional/historic boats as diesel supplies disappear?

-- do fuel boats still have enough customers to continue -- and if not, where *does* diesel come from?

-- where is charging done? how much capacity and how many points are needed, and where?

-- who pays for and installs charging points outside boatyards?

-- what happens to people who can't afford to replace their diesels with electric?

 

I'm sure people can come up with many others, but we don't need to keep arguing pointlessly about the big global and political and societal and environmental issues (which of course do need solving, but not by us) -- so let's focus on the ones peculiar to canals and try and find solutions to them, because nobody else will do it for us.

 

 

I haven't answers but these are my thoughts:

 

We need two performance specifications - one for the boats and one for the waterway system. 

 

*The one for the boats should basically specify range and duration without a charge - in particular, how far is it reasonable to expect a boat to be able to go without recharging. 

*The one for the canal system should specify how far might be the maximum distance between charge points (which needs to be significantly less than the standard range, and ideally less than half the standard range) and the ratio of boats to chargers.  

 

This is not dissimilar to how other facilities work, e.g. water, waste disposal. The big caveat is that if you run out of water you can get to the next tap, if you run out of e-juice you can't, so there can be no skimping by leaving, say, the Middle Level with virtually no charge points.

 

This would give a framework for working out where chargers should be and how many there should be at each location - I'm assuming most cases it is more practical to put five chargers at one location that one at each of five locations, especially on a rural canal. 

It would also give boaters groups something to campaign on. If for example there should be no more than ten miles between charge points, then clearly there needs to be one on the upper half of the Erewash Canal rather than just one at Trent Lock. As a note, if my boat had a range of thirty miles, I wouldn't go down the Ashby canal and rely on using one solitary charge point at the far end, if a range of 30 miles were typical,  the Ashby Canal Society could make the case that they need more than one charge point and those they have need to be reliable. People will push their luck but the system shouldn't require them to - I'm minded one night trying to get home in the electric car when a storm blew up, I had fifteen miles to go and a range of 20 miles left, but if a tree came down I was in trouble because I'd no spare capacity for a diversion and wasn't near a charge point (because they are too thin on the ground round here) - that kind of situation needs to be avoided.

That said I don't think it's unreasonable of CRT and others to suggest that, if you want to moor for two weeks in the middle of nowhere then you need to make sure you're electrical system is up to it - they don't put water taps and elsan disposal in the middle of nowhere, they expect you to go five miles down the cut for them. 

Just thoughts... 

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2 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

I'm not saying there is no better solution, but...

 

when I brought Lutine over the K&A, I was running low on diesel, getting it bankside was a struggle for a variety of reasons so I drove to Marlborough and bough red diesel at Tesco there. The next load was white from my local Sainsbury.

 

It struck me that I could carry enough diesel to run for a day and a half in one hand (20 litre jerry can) and I could gather it for consumption at a distance. 

I'm not sure what the equivalent is with an all-electric boat. The efuels at least offer this convenience even if they are less efficient

 

As railway locomotion has evolved the older stock has been pushed to the quieter bits of the system, and electric traction has not reached the smaller branch lines at all, to the point where diesel trains run under the wires to serve non-electrified destinations (bear with me, this is heading somewhere) - when Finland electrified they tried to close the top end of one line rather than electrify it as they didn't want to run diesel trans just for that bit and electrification was very expensive per train.

 

On boats, the effect could well be that, for example, the Witham Navigable Drains, or the northern BCN become no go areas because the number of boats doesn't justify recharging points - you can't buy diesel in the WND either, but that doesn't matter, you can carry it in a jerry can. 

 

So that's my negative comment - my positive one is, can someone advise how much it will add to the cost of my 60th birthday present (a narrow boat somewhere between 57 and 70 feet long) if it has an electric engine rather than a diesel one (and would it need a "range extender)

Right this all depends on what you can do yourself, but I would go 70 foot with a motor room at the stern.

I would run the boat at 48 volts for drive the batteries [lithium polymer] to achieve just over 30KWHs would cost me just over 4k new, I would have to build these into banks and add Balancing boards.

I would have one lithium battery for my 12 volt leisure use charged by a 48v to 12 charger these arnt expensive

I would run a 48 charger inverter from victron my mate is selling these at 1100 squids brand new.

Drive motor 2 choices my route would be 48 forklift drive motor [must be a drive motor] these spin at 1680 rpm, I would use a 2 to 1 belt reduction, I would purchase from 4QD a speed controller i would expect to do this for 1000 squids, I would run a large prop with an expected top RPM of 800 the motor should develop enough torque to do this.

I would find secondhand a 240 water cooled gennie this would be for charging via the inverter charger and hopefully would be for emergencies only.

Solar full roof of them end to end with flying saucer roof vent under it, I have just bought 4 x 320 watt mono panels for 300 squids brand new so the whole roof is doable at under 1000 squids [10 panels?] also a midnite solar controller 600 squids

So their you go thats how I would do it the other option is Richard at Finesse I would say his kit is pretty much the best that money can buy but it would cost a lot more

Edited by peterboat
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I said its not my problem and I meant it, this is not shirking my environmental responsibilities, its just a reality.

 

The diesel ban in 2050 is an aspiration, not a fact, and realistically nobody makes plans for what might happen in 30 years time. If I was a young 20 year old hoping to spend my life on the cut I still would not be doing anything yet.

I could sell my boat and get a brand new "electric ready" boat built but that could turn out to be a total waste of the earths resources, or I could convert my boat to hybrid and pretend I was saving the planet whilst actually using up more resources. As I said in an earlier post, the navigable canals might even be gone in 30 years time, or maybe so tightly regulated that nobody will want to go boating.

Everything has its time and its not now, not yet.

The "bleeding edge" is just a place to bleed money.

 

If boating continues then charging points round the system will work very well, a boat is a big thing so can carry a lot of batteries, moves slowly, and likes to spend nights stationary in new locations, its ideal, and the boats that don't move much can already live on solar for 7 or 8 months of the year, we can have "winter charging moorings".

 

If things start to move faster than I expect then I will too, I have a plan but doubt I will need it ?.

 

.................Dave

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2 minutes ago, dmr said:

I said its not my problem and I meant it, this is not shirking my environmental responsibilities, its just a reality.

 

The diesel ban in 2050 is an aspiration, not a fact, and realistically nobody makes plans for what might happen in 30 years time. If I was a young 20 year old hoping to spend my life on the cut I still would not be doing anything yet.

I could sell my boat and get a brand new "electric ready" boat built but that could turn out to be a total waste of the earths resources, or I could convert my boat to hybrid and pretend I was saving the planet whilst actually using up more resources. As I said in an earlier post, the navigable canals might even be gone in 30 years time, or maybe so tightly regulated that nobody will want to go boating.

Everything has its time and its not now, not yet.

The "bleeding edge" is just a place to bleed money.

 

If boating continues then charging points round the system will work very well, a boat is a big thing so can carry a lot of batteries, moves slowly, and likes to spend nights stationary in new locations, its ideal, and the boats that don't move much can already live on solar for 7 or 8 months of the year, we can have "winter charging moorings".

 

If things start to move faster than I expect then I will too, I have a plan but doubt I will need it ?.

 

.................Dave

You wont.

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1 hour ago, dmr said:

I said its not my problem and I meant it, this is not shirking my environmental responsibilities, its just a reality.

 

The diesel ban in 2050 is an aspiration, not a fact, and realistically nobody makes plans for what might happen in 30 years time. If I was a young 20 year old hoping to spend my life on the cut I still would not be doing anything yet.

I could sell my boat and get a brand new "electric ready" boat built but that could turn out to be a total waste of the earths resources, or I could convert my boat to hybrid and pretend I was saving the planet whilst actually using up more resources. As I said in an earlier post, the navigable canals might even be gone in 30 years time, or maybe so tightly regulated that nobody will want to go boating.

Everything has its time and its not now, not yet.

The "bleeding edge" is just a place to bleed money.

 

If boating continues then charging points round the system will work very well, a boat is a big thing so can carry a lot of batteries, moves slowly, and likes to spend nights stationary in new locations, its ideal, and the boats that don't move much can already live on solar for 7 or 8 months of the year, we can have "winter charging moorings".

 

If things start to move faster than I expect then I will too, I have a plan but doubt I will need it ?.

 

.................Dave

 

1 hour ago, mrsmelly said:

You wont.

Now where did I put that bucket of sand??

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1 minute ago, IanD said:

You or Bobbybass have any offspring?

Nope...

 

Only person that matters is me.

 

I like diesel...I have a diesel boat...and a huge kick ass engined diesel car.

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Just now, IanD said:

You or Bobbybass have any offspring?

Five kids and nine grandkids aged from 49 down to 6. They may well have to go electric or something else when the time comes. I will never have to and have no intention of wasting thousands on a more expensive, inferior propulsion system. I am not saying it isnt coming but it will not effect most of us on here. Of course if peeps want to spend many thousands on some non ice propulsion method then its their choice.

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36 minutes ago, peterboat said:

 

Now where did I put that bucket of sand??

Why? are you going to put your head in it rather than face the reality that 99.9% of boaters can't do anything yet because the charging points don't exist ?.

 

When and if it does happen it will be easy, electric points are no big deal, I was out walking in the hills this morning and noticed that even a couple of very remote houses have car charging points. As long as its limited to "domestic" levels of charge current its no problem. Give grants to canalside residents to install charging points and let them make a little profit too, suddenly all those "No Mooring" signs will be replaced with " Please Moor Here" signs ?

The canalside pubs will do it too but limit the current to 5 amps so that you have to spend a week there.

 

................Dave

 

 

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32 minutes ago, dmr said:

Why? are you going to put your head in it rather than face the reality that 99.9% of boaters can't do anything yet because the charging points don't exist ?.

 

When and if it does happen it will be easy, electric points are no big deal, I was out walking in the hills this morning and noticed that even a couple of very remote houses have car charging points. As long as its limited to "domestic" levels of charge current its no problem. Give grants to canalside residents to install charging points and let them make a little profit too, suddenly all those "No Mooring" signs will be replaced with " Please Moor Here" signs ?

The canalside pubs will do it too but limit the current to 5 amps so that you have to spend a week there.

 

................Dave

 

 

Ooh, now we're getting some ideas. How about when you moor outside a pub the charge rate starts at 5A, but goes up by 2A for every drink you have? Plus a 5A bonus for a meal...

Edited by IanD
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19 minutes ago, IanD said:

Ooh, now we're getting some ideas. How about when you moor outside a pub the charge rate starts at 5A, but goes up by 2A for every drink you have? Plus a 5A bonus for a meal...

Good idea and maybe we could make lager drinkers pay double what a beer drinker pays? 

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53 minutes ago, IanD said:

Ooh, now we're getting some ideas. How about when you moor outside a pub the charge rate starts at 5A, but goes up by 2A for every drink you have? Plus a 5A bonus for a meal...

I think the opposite would happen, once the landlord realises that you can drink several pints he turns the current down so that you have to stay there longer.

 

A couple of years ago we and Goliath spent some time on a pub mooring. After a few days the landlord knocked on the boat and asked how much longer we planned to stay. I was expecting a telling off and sling yer hook warning, but he said "if you plan to stay much longer i'm going to order in an extra barrel".

 

...............Dave

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On 14/10/2020 at 14:26, IanD said:

I wonder if any of the boat hire companies are seriously looking into this following the announcements? It would be nice to think that some were genuinely looking forward to the future and not sticking their heads in the sand and hoping it'll all go away or be so far away they don't have to worry about it...

 

I'd have thought that the first hire companies on the main canal network (not the Mon & Brec) to make this work (maybe they'd have to collaborate to provide charging points?) would find themselves not only 100% booked out but able to charge a premium for the boats, because 99% of hirers would really appreciate the lack of noise, vibration and smell. They would probably find they could then expand their business at the expense of the "stick-in-the-diesel" hire companies, because why would you want to hire one when there's a far nicer alternative?

Surly they will be one of the hardest to change, most hire boats travel for up to 12 hours a day so will require a lot of recharging unlike lots of private boats who only do a few hours a day and some days non at all.

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28 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Surly they will be one of the hardest to change, most hire boats travel for up to 12 hours a day so will require a lot of recharging unlike lots of private boats who only do a few hours a day and some days non at all.

The hire boats will be ok but they might need to do shorter days. I am moored on a hire boat route right now (they are still doing good business even in October) and its mostly very predictable, we know when they set off and where they will likely spend each night, and turn round to go home. Could maybe put in multiple higher power charging points at these locations.

I have thought about this a lot of late, the towpath is getting pretty crap in many places due to high speed cycling, enterprising land owners could provide off side moorings with a charging point and a place to sit round a BBQ/fire and drink a beer, and these could double as winter moorings. CRT will need to reduce the admin needed to create new moorings but otherwise I think it could work. The few casual offside moorings that currently exist are very popular...the Quarry on the South Oxford and the place on the T&M just above Middlewich etc.

 

..................Dave

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14 hours ago, IanD said:

As I said many times, fossil fuels are the cheapest easiest most convenient most familiar highest power smallest solution to many transport/power problems -- power generation, cars, planes, ships, motorbikes, narrowboats, tractors, mowers, you name it, it's "the best" solution from all these points of view.

 

But the world doing what is easy and cheap is the reason that climate change is happening, and general opinion is that this is A Bad Thing and we have to Do Something about it to prevent an accelerating catastrophe, and one big Something that pretty much everyone agrees needs doing is to get fossil fuels out of as many types of transport as practical.

 

If people want to take the view "this isn't my problem, I'm too old to worry about it" then they're basically putting two fingers up to everyone's children who *will* inherit the problem and saying "F*ck you, I'm alright Jack". Most people -- except those putting this view forward -- would disapprove of this attitude.

 

So having established that this is really a problem for humanity as a whole, not really a political one as such -- what is going to happen to canal boating as a consequence?

 

Lots of people keep pointing out the problems with electric boats and recharging them as if these are a big problems (they are) which we have to solve (we don't). The existing propulsion and power technology (engines, electrics, batteries) wasn't developed for canals, it was developed by the 20th century car (and digger and industrial engine) industry and we simply adapted and used it.

 

Exactly the same applies to electric boats -- yes there are plenty of issues (batteries, lithium, recharging, cost, grid capacity, where the power comes from, renewable reliability, peak current loads, cost, safe installation and maintainance of HV systems, mechanics who understand them, cost -- the list is long) but the car industry is >1000x bigger and richer and is investing billions (or tens of billions) to solve these problems -- and will undoubtedly do so because it doesn't have any choice if it wants to survive.

 

And when it's done this, we get a free ride on the back of 21st century car technology just like we did with 20th century -- the big issues are not our problem. Yes maybe hydrogen will be part of this solution too, though all the real experts think this is really only likely to take off for aircraft (see what I did there?) because while it's inefficient and expensive and nasty to generate/store/distribute/use it's the only way to cram that much energy into that small a space with that low a weight. Might also work for ships (huge amount of energy storage needed) and long-distance trucks, but the case is weaker for these. Anyway, the dead giveaway is that *all* the major car companies are putting all their money into batteries.

 

So it's pretty much guaranteed that by 2025 battery technology with 50kWh-100kWh capacity (choose what you want) will be more than competitive from all points of view (including cost and range) with IC engines for new cars, and therefore for new narrowboats. Which also pretty much guarantees that by 2030 there'll be a healthy lower-cost market in secondhand kit for retrofitting into boats owned by people with less deep pockets, and by 2035 even the dirt-cheap end of the market will be covered -- this is exactly equivalent to the market for new cars, secondhand cars, and old bangers.

 

And the beauty of it is that we don't have to do a thing, somebody else will spend billions of dollars to make it all work and be mass-produced at low cost, along with solving all the issues to do with power generation and distribution and renewables and the grid and smart charging and politics and battery disposal and lithium mining and... -- get it? The same applies to solar panels, the cost of these will continue to drop driven by the global renewables industry, we just get them nice and cheap to stick on boat roofs (with limited area...). Installation and maintenance of HV circuits will need special care (and regulation) just like gas does now -- but there will be thousands of auto mechanics who can do this because it'll all be familiar stuff to them, just like current boats are to mechanics nowadays.

 

What we should be worried about is how to get this to work on the canals, especially where they're different to cars. Examples include:

 

-- cars can drive ten miles or more to the nearest "filling station", boats can't

-- houses can put 50m2 of solar panels on their roofs, boats can't (maybe 10m2-15m2 for a narrowboat)

-- what do people who moor in the middle of nowhere do, especially in winter?

-- how would this work for hire bases and their customers, CCers, liveaboards?

-- what happens to traditional/historic boats as diesel supplies disappear?

-- do fuel boats still have enough customers to continue -- and if not, where *does* diesel come from?

-- where is charging done? how much capacity and how many points are needed, and where?

-- who pays for and installs charging points outside boatyards?

-- what happens to people who can't afford to replace their diesels with electric?

 

I'm sure people can come up with many others, but we don't need to keep arguing pointlessly about the big global and political and societal and environmental issues (which of course do need solving, but not by us) -- so let's focus on the ones peculiar to canals and try and find solutions to them, because nobody else will do it for us.

 

Any chance this plea might work this time? ?

 

[and to answer an earlier question, yes I've been on this forum a lot, but I still live in hope than one day people on it might stop arguing quite so pointlessly about things they can't (or don't need to) solve, and think about how to change things that actually matter to boaters and that we might even be able to do something about...]

I don't think that looking at the car industry is the best guide - canal boat engines have developed on the back of truck engines and we should be looking there for better guidance for future methods and timescales. 

 

One of the consequences of an over-promotion of electric motors for propulsion as the only alternative to fossil fuels is that it stymies the search for better alternatives that area better fit to the established usage patterns.

12 hours ago, dmr said:

I said its not my problem and I meant it, this is not shirking my environmental responsibilities, its just a reality.

 

The diesel ban in 2050 is an aspiration, not a fact, and realistically nobody makes plans for what might happen in 30 years time. If I was a young 20 year old hoping to spend my life on the cut I still would not be doing anything yet.

I could sell my boat and get a brand new "electric ready" boat built but that could turn out to be a total waste of the earths resources, or I could convert my boat to hybrid and pretend I was saving the planet whilst actually using up more resources. As I said in an earlier post, the navigable canals might even be gone in 30 years time, or maybe so tightly regulated that nobody will want to go boating.

Everything has its time and its not now, not yet.

The "bleeding edge" is just a place to bleed money.

 

If boating continues then charging points round the system will work very well, a boat is a big thing so can carry a lot of batteries, moves slowly, and likes to spend nights stationary in new locations, its ideal, and the boats that don't move much can already live on solar for 7 or 8 months of the year, we can have "winter charging moorings".

 

If things start to move faster than I expect then I will too, I have a plan but doubt I will need it ?.

 

.................Dave

You might struggle with the economics of winter only charging moorings. Capital investment likes to have 24/7/365 usage as much as possible - sitting idle for half a year doubles the price, in effect.

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7 hours ago, dmr said:

The hire boats will be ok but they might need to do shorter days. I am moored on a hire boat route right now (they are still doing good business even in October) and its mostly very predictable, we know when they set off and where they will likely spend each night, and turn round to go home. Could maybe put in multiple higher power charging points at these locations.

I have thought about this a lot of late, the towpath is getting pretty crap in many places due to high speed cycling, enterprising land owners could provide off side moorings with a charging point and a place to sit round a BBQ/fire and drink a beer, and these could double as winter moorings. CRT will need to reduce the admin needed to create new moorings but otherwise I think it could work. The few casual offside moorings that currently exist are very popular...the Quarry on the South Oxford and the place on the T&M just above Middlewich etc.

 

..................Dave

Actually the towpaths are frequently in much better condition than when we first went boating in 1967 when many were impassable. The investment for just boating was not there and the improvements only came when someone discovered a significant demand for a non-boating use of the towpaths.

 

Given the quality of life agenda for CaRT, what if someone built a network of small office spaces alongside the canal for people to have an alternative to working just from their bedroom (see an article in press a couple of days ago about pubs offering this). Adding charging points for boats as well as phones and laptops would be an added bonus.

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22 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I think there is a halfway house that meets both the zero emission targets and the requirement not to spend a fortune ripping out ICE engines and replacing with ??????????????/

 

I have quoted / suggested (a couple of times in this thread) the use of the

 

Efuels’, also known as ‘electrofuels’ or ‘synthetic fuels’ are ‘artificial fossil fuels’ produced using CO2 and water. In the form of artificial gasoline, diesel or kerosene, they can be used as ‘drop in fuels’ in an internal combustion engine. To be considered zero-emission, these fuels would have to be generated using renewable electricity and CO2 captured from the air. (Transport & Environment (2017) Electrofuels.)'

 

'Drop-in' replacement for diesel & petrol, no investment in new 'engines', batteries or motors but at what cost per litre ?

You can buy a lot of Efuel for the £30k (?) it would cost to replace an ICE with a battery / solar system.

 

All 'new boats' could be built (from 2035) with 'new technology' zero-emission propulsion and all 'old boats' allowed to use zero-emission Efuels until they 'die'

 

That is what the li k in my post #82 was about.

 

Synthesized from algae, unlike other biofuels  they don't compete for land or crops and reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

 

What's not to like?

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