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Swapping from red diesel to HVO fuel


Bosley Dave

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19 minutes ago, IanD said:

Does anyone have any direct price comparisons for red diesel vs. HVO on the canals, from the few suppliers of HVO?

 

(I know what Rose posted, what's a typical price for comparable domestic diesel? How about for propulsion/domestic/mixed use?)

 

Trying to work out how big the HVO premium actually is (or should be)...

North Kilworth marina I understand are charging 92p/litre domestic. I think one of the fuel boats in london was charging 89p/litre domestic.  Both those are HVO prices. 

Edited by frangar
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6 minutes ago, frangar said:

North Kilworth marina I understand are charging 92p/litre domestic. I think one of the fuel boats in london was charging 89p/litre domestic.  Both those are HVO prices. 

What are corresponding diesel prices?

26 minutes ago, Up-Side-Down said:

TWIMC: Crown are offering to put a separate tank in FOC for a trial period where a marina/ boatyard/etc want to trial HVO. They have self-contained, ready-to-go units that can be just dropped into place. Anyone wishing to follow up on this should contact Ryan Abreu 07585 792918.

With the escalating price of gas oil, HVO is now up to £0.15p cheaper than GO! At the very worst, it enjoys a £0.05 advantage as far as 500+ tanker deliveries are concerned.

So there's no reason that all the marinas shouldn't switch, then...

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Just now, IanD said:

What are corresponding diesel prices?

There aren’t any for NKM as they have gone 100% HVO. I’m not sure if the london fuel boat has done the same. I’m guessing unless an operator supplies both it will be hard to judge given how much gas oil varies…eg compare the thames yards to Turners in Wheaton Aston. 

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40 minutes ago, frangar said:

There aren’t any for NKM as they have gone 100% HVO. I’m not sure if the london fuel boat has done the same. I’m guessing unless an operator supplies both it will be hard to judge given how much gas oil varies…eg compare the thames yards to Turners in Wheaton Aston. 

This is quite hard to compare like with like for price comparisons as there is an obvious difference between boatyard prices which includes their mark up and the price of the fuel delivered by tanker in 500 litre+ deliveries which is the price I quote. The last time I asked which would be about three weeks ago, HVO was £0.69 and gas oil £0.84. HVO seems pretty stable at around the £0.70 point and gas oil has steadily climbed to north of £0.80. I don't anticipate much of a drop in gas oil prices for the foreseeable future and would expect HVO prices to remain pretty stable as they have since I started my involvement with the fuel over a year ago.

 

It might be interesting to note that via the RTFO/RTFC mechanism (no, you don't want to know – just think of it as a subsidy) the price of HVO is subsidised to the tune of approximately £0.70 a litre, which shows how much more expensive it is to manufacture than gas oil. 150 odd years of refining petrochemicals has meant that we know how to do it cheaply. HVO production is still in its infancy and this is reflected in its base cost. Cheap (and hopefully green) hydrogen will ultimately make a big difference ....... and also produce a product that is pretty much 100% carbon neutral.

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17 hours ago, Rose Narrowboats said:

For what it's worth, we've just switched over our tank to HVO and we're now running the hire fleet on it. Early days yet, but so far it is living up to the promises.

 

We are also retailing it, but a £1.08 for domestic, how many people will buy it remains to be seen.

Are you advertising that at the pump with a very big notice?

 

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Just had the latest prices from Crown. The bad news is that they've used up all their old stock of HVO and just taken a new tanker delivery from the Stanlow Terminal on the MSC. The prices for a 1000 litre delivery are now £0.79 for gas oil and £0.88 for HVO. Where GBF Ltd are with their current stock will determine their pricing but I do know that for a recent contract they were able to undercut Crown.

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52 minutes ago, Up-Side-Down said:

This is quite hard to compare like with like for price comparisons as there is an obvious difference between boatyard prices which includes their mark up and the price of the fuel delivered by tanker in 500 litre+ deliveries which is the price I quote. The last time I asked which would be about three weeks ago, HVO was £0.69 and gas oil £0.84. HVO seems pretty stable at around the £0.70 point and gas oil has steadily climbed to north of £0.80. I don't anticipate much of a drop in gas oil prices for the foreseeable future and would expect HVO prices to remain pretty stable as they have since I started my involvement with the fuel over a year ago.

 

It might be interesting to note that via the RTFO/RTFC mechanism (no, you don't want to know – just think of it as a subsidy) the price of HVO is subsidised to the tune of approximately £0.70 a litre, which shows how much more expensive it is to manufacture than gas oil. 150 odd years of refining petrochemicals has meant that we know how to do it cheaply. HVO production is still in its infancy and this is reflected in its base cost. Cheap (and hopefully green) hydrogen will ultimately make a big difference ....... and also produce a product that is pretty much 100% carbon neutral.

Usual problem with green hydrogen -- renewable electricity in to hydrogen out needs more than twice that amount of renewable energy as using the electricity directly. Until we have literally unlimited 100% renewable energy, every kWh of "green" hydrogen needs a kWh of non-green energy which wouldn't  be needed if the power was used directly.

 

Yes if the options are only fossil fuel or green hydrogen it makes sense, but it's far better to use/store the electricity in all other cases.

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31 minutes ago, IanD said:

Usual problem with green hydrogen -- renewable electricity in to hydrogen out needs more than twice that amount of renewable energy as using the electricity directly. Until we have literally unlimited 100% renewable energy, every kWh of "green" hydrogen needs a kWh of non-green energy which wouldn't  be needed if the power was used directly.

 

Yes if the options are only fossil fuel or green hydrogen it makes sense, but it's far better to use/store the electricity in all other cases.

Agree totally.

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2 hours ago, IanD said:

What are corresponding diesel prices?

So there's no reason that all the marinas shouldn't switch, then...

The boatyard near North Kilworth marina was doing 83p a litre red a couple of months ago, so the consumer likely still has cheaper choices than some of the HVO marinas (though chances are prices have gone up since then and the boatyard couldn't actually sell me any because their fuel point was blocked off with other boats!)

 

I suspect the shift to HVO will be more rapid if it gets a fuel duty cut (or misses out on a diesel fuel duty rise)

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38 minutes ago, Up-Side-Down said:

Just had the latest prices from Crown. The bad news is that they've used up all their old stock of HVO and just taken a new tanker delivery from the Stanlow Terminal on the MSC. The prices for a 1000 litre delivery are now £0.79 for gas oil and £0.88 for HVO. Where GBF Ltd are with their current stock will determine their pricing but I do know that for a recent contract they were able to undercut Crown.

Interesting -- for the sake of argument, let's assume that HVO is (and stays) about 10% more expensive than diesel.

 

How many boaters would willingly pay this for the advantages of HVO?

 

(cleaner burning, less smell and smoke, much lower water absorption -- and of course, a lot greener than dino juice...)

 

Would love to know, might even set up a poll... 😉

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7 minutes ago, IanD said:

Interesting -- for the sake of argument, let's assume that HVO is (and stays) about 10% more expensive than diesel.

 

How many boaters would willingly pay this for the advantages of HVO?

 

(cleaner burning, less smell and smoke, much lower water absorption -- and of course, a lot greener than dino juice...)

 

Would love to know, might even set up a poll... 😉

Or look at it as the premium payable for an insurance policy to safeguard against the ravages of diesel bug and saponification issues brought about by the 1st generation biodiesel content in gas oil. A typical boater might burn 200 – 400 litres of diesel a year so that's an insurance premium of between £20 – £40. How much does it take to sort diesel bug and the "sticky diesel' issues identified by RCR which, for convenience, I've called saponification but the chemist on my HVO sub-group describes in far greater (and more horrifying) detail! I believe sorting out these sort of issues easily runs into three figure sums.

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10 minutes ago, Up-Side-Down said:

Or look at it as the premium payable for an insurance policy to safeguard against the ravages of diesel bug and saponification issues brought about by the 1st generation biodiesel content in gas oil. A typical boater might burn 200 – 400 litres of diesel a year so that's an insurance premium of between £20 – £40. How much does it take to sort diesel bug and the "sticky diesel' issues identified by RCR which, for convenience, I've called saponification but the chemist on my HVO sub-group describes in far greater (and more horrifying) detail! I believe sorting out these sort of issues easily runs into three figure sums.

Add that to the list of reasons to switch then...

 

I expect there are still some boaters who would rather save a few pence per litre than go green and switch to HVO; it would be interesting to know how many, because if the majority are happy to switch (so all the marinas and boatyards do too) the dinosaurs might end up having to use HVO whether they like it or not. Think of it as democracy in action... 😉

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It is interesting that over the Winter 'our' marina is planning to install petrol tank(s) and pump(s) as the requests for petrol is now approaching that of diesel. Despite the stringent requirements (underground tanks etc) they still consider it a worthwhile investment.

 

The marina owners are a large marine engineering group, with several marinas and, apparently, the largest fleet of water injection marine dredgers in the UK. I cannot imagine they are going into this without considering the future trends. 

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49 minutes ago, IanD said:

Add that to the list of reasons to switch then...

 

I expect there are still some boaters who would rather save a few pence per litre than go green and switch to HVO; it would be interesting to know how many, because if the majority are happy to switch (so all the marinas and boatyards do too) the dinosaurs might end up having to use HVO whether they like it or not. Think of it as democracy in action... 😉

 

If HVO is as good as its claimed then I would happily pay a 10 or even 20% premium. The bigger issue at present is that its so difficult to actually get the stuff.

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2 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

If HVO is as good as its claimed then I would happily pay a 10 or even 20% premium. The bigger issue at present is that its so difficult to actually get the stuff.

 

But that does seem to be changing. If marinas/boatyards/CART were convinced that most boaters had the same attitude as you (and me), they could switch over pretty quickly with almost no effort...

 

It wouldn't even be difficult for CART to find out boater's opinions on this. Maybe they'll ask?

Edited by IanD
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1 hour ago, IanD said:

Interesting -- for the sake of argument, let's assume that HVO is (and stays) about 10% more expensive than diesel.

 

How many boaters would willingly pay this for the advantages of HVO?

 

(cleaner burning, less smell and smoke, much lower water absorption -- and of course, a lot greener than dino juice...)

 

Would love to know, might even set up a poll... 😉

I would be happy to pay a little extra to use HVO. I will be asking in the marina when I next get diesel to see if there are any plans to get HVO in.

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34 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

If HVO is as good as its claimed then I would happily pay a 10 or even 20% premium. The bigger issue at present is that its so difficult to actually get the stuff.

If all the waterside outlets start selling it there wont be much choice on what we use, red wont be available at garages as there wont be a demand for it.

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54 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

If all the waterside outlets start selling it there wont be much choice on what we use, red wont be available at garages as there wont be a demand for it.

 

Just been up to my local garage to buy a couple of Jerry cans of red. It has three pumps, petrol, diesel and red, and there is often a queue for the red. I suspect there are a lot of smallholders/very small farms that use a lot of the stuff and will have little incentive to move to HVO.

 

Am surprised that the wokeists have not cancelled the use of JerryCans. 😀

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17 minutes ago, frangar said:

Garage supplied into cans is one flat rate..the same as the domestic boat rate....no propulsion addition 

 

There main business will be supplying local smallholders, boaters will be a tiny tiny fraction, I doubt they even know about 60:40 splits. I also believe that no declaration is required if the diesel is purchased in cans from a boatyard? though they might need a vehicle registration number for larger quantities???

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Just now, dmr said:

 

There main business will be supplying local smallholders, boaters will be a tiny tiny fraction, I doubt they even know about 60:40 splits. I also believe that no declaration is required if the diesel is purchased in cans from a boatyard? though they might need a vehicle registration number for larger quantities???

Thats about right...Be interesting to see if they continue to do red when its stopped for construction etc....I think farmers have an exemption like boats tho so you might be ok.

 

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2 minutes ago, frangar said:

Thats about right...Be interesting to see if they continue to do red when its stopped for construction etc....I think farmers have an exemption like boats tho so you might be ok.

 

 

Driving to the petrol station every week or two is tedious, its a long though quite attractive drive. Hopefully I will find somebody able to deliver HVO in reasonable quantities and at a half reasonable price sometime this winter. 😀

 

Its usually rural garages that sell red so am pretty sure that its farming rather than construction that is using it (or maybe they park up just round the corner and pour it straight into the vehicle, usually a pick up).

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