Installation of new electric boat charging bollards

[Murflynn]

13 hours ago, MartynG said:

I can't say I have met a leisure boat owner who wears a peaked cap let alone one with gold braid although I can't say I have done any boating on the Thames.

Even so you seem to have a stereotypical view  which is very probably not applicable in the majority of  cases.

 

Wasn't there a video clip posted on here of a narrowboat owner ramming a GRP cruiser on the Thames?. Now if ever 'self arrogant self entitled' adjectives applied that was him (the narrowboat skipper).

 

 

 

 

a bit pompous for someone who hasn't even been there.

 

try boating between Henley and Maidenhead on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  You will need both hands and feet to count how many peaked caps come out of their marinas at places like Hurley.

 

 

 

[MtB]

1 minute ago, Murflynn said:

 

a bit pompous for someone who hasn't even been there.

 

try boating between Henley and Maidenhead on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  You will need both hands and feet to count how many peaked caps come out of their marinas at places like Hurley.

 

 

 

Having done just as you describe many times I think you are over-egging it. Yes you do see the odd pillock with a peaked cap and gold braid but not that many. The thing I notice though is the women on the tupperware wearing white silk gloves so they don't actually touch the nasty ropes! 

 

Oh and all the 'fender socks', to save the fenders from getting marked...

 

 

Oh and another thing. Windsor bridge is really low, so peels out the really whopping great multi-story white plastic boats, so you don't actually get the worst examples Maidenhead to Henley.

[Alan de Enfield]

21 minutes ago, MtB said:

Oh and all the 'fender socks', to save the fenders from getting marked...

 

Wrong way around.

Fender socks stop the fenders scratching, rubbing thru the gelcoat and discolouring the GRP

 

Without fender socks .....................

 

[Mike Todd]

14 hours ago, MartynG said:

I can't say I have met a leisure boat owner who wears a peaked cap let alone one with gold braid although I can't say I have done any boating on the Thames.

Even so you seem to have a stereotypical view  which is very probably not applicable in the majority of  cases.

 

Wasn't there a video clip posted on here of a narrowboat owner ramming a GRP cruiser on the Thames?. Now if ever 'self arrogant self entitled' adjectives applied that was him (the narrowboat skipper).

 

 

 

Perhaps the fling bridge sitters know that you should not put 'the' before hoi.

[PD1964]

I’ve seen more peak caps with scrambled egg being worn on Narrowboats then GRP’s, especially with groups on hire boats enjoying themselves.

Edited May 2, 2022 by PD1964

[Alan de Enfield]

12 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

I’ve seen more peak caps with scrambled egg being worn on Narrowboats then GRP’s, especially with groups on hire boats enjoying themselves.

 

 

This was on the boat when we bought it - apparently he was fully within his rights (and qualified) to wear it, the plaque alongside was presented to him from his last command.

 

We made sure that both items were removed when we took ownership.

 

 

 

[Momac]

8 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Wrong way around.

Fender socks stop the fenders scratching, rubbing thru the gelcoat and discolouring the GRP

 

Without fender socks .....................

 

 

I'm not convinced.

The grit off the lock sides gets trapped in the sock and seems to me more likely then to act as an abrasive . Also moor on a pontoon and the pontoon cuts through the sock. prefer the fenders to be naked.

[LadyG]

Obviously fender socks need to be washed every so often, but fenders should not be pressed against the side of the hull of a cruiser except when the wind is adverse. Some yachts have an apron which is suspended from the guard rail to prevent any scratching from fenders, no need for socks. Not sure if that would work in locks.

Edited May 2, 2022 by LadyG

[ditchcrawler]

14 minutes ago, LadyG said:

Obviously fender socks need to be washed every so often, but fenders should not be pressed against the side of the hull of a cruiser except when the wind is adverse. Some yachts have an apron which is suspended from the guard rail to prevent any scratching from fenders, no need for socks. Not sure if that would work in locks.

If the fender is not going to press on the hull why bother to hang the bloody ugly things all over the place 

[Momac]

13 minutes ago, LadyG said:

.. fenders should not be pressed against the side of the hull of a cruiser except when the wind is adverse. S

If moored on a river against a wall of pontoon the flow of the water will result in one or more fenders taking some load ,

It is inconceivable even if there is no flow that the wind will be such that that there will be no fender taking a load for any significant  length of time .

 

[Momac]

7 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

If the fender is not going to press on the hull why bother to hang the bloody ugly things all over the place 

Good point 

 

 

 

[Murflynn]

10 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

If the fender is not going to press on the hull why bother to hang the bloody ugly things all over the place 

I see wot u did there.   😉

 

 

 

 

 

.............   agree entirely with the content but the avatar is bleeding offal.

[IanD]

On 01/05/2022 at 10:57, cuthound said:

 

I used to project manage the installation of critical power for a living to things like data centres, hospitals and telephone exchanges.

 

As a rough metric for estimating we used £1000 per kW ten years ago. Costs have risen considerably since.

 

The cost assumed anadequate, nearby supply of electricity to tap into, which won't be the case for many rural mooring locations.

 

Even at those prices a single 16 amp charging point would be about £4000 and how many would be needed?

 

Several would be needed at each mooring place and the mooring places would need to be about 10 lock miles apart (similar distance to sanitary stations/water points to cover the network.

 

Assuming that cost is correct (which seems a lot more reasonable than the £1M for 10 points quoted earlier...) let's try and work out how many charging points would be needed, on the basis that a recharge might be needed at least every other night when cruising all day (which is what I worked out when doing a power audit).

 

Depending on how many boats actually cruise as opposed to staying moored most of the time (not that many, I think...) and how they're spread around the system (more in popular areas, but still enough in lightly-used ones) I come up with a hand-waving estimate of somewhere between 1000 and 2000 charging points for the whole network, which might cost between £5M and £10M to install.

 

Which sounds a lot, but it's less than 5% of CARTs annual budget -- and even if (for example) this was financed as a "green boating surcharge" it would come out as less than £300 per boat, which hardly seems excessive.

 

Even in rural locations there are always power lines near or crossing the canal at regular intervals to supply houses, and we're not talking about high-speed 100kW+ charging points here, the loads per charging point are similar to or smaller than one house (assuming a 32A point). On average that's one every 1-2 miles around the system, but obviously they're more likely to be installed in groups except in rural areas or lightly used canals. I'd expect that (like car charging points) you'd be able to see which ones were available/working using the internet, and ideally to book a charging slot in advance so you know one will be free when you need it.

 

Even if these figures are an underestimate (e.g. £10000 per point for 7kW/32A) the numbers are still not big compared to the CART budget or taken as a "green surcharge" amount per boat -- and bear in mind this doesn't all get done in one year, it would take quite a few years to roll out (5?) so the costs per year would be much lower. Viewed another way, it's the same size problem as getting power to at less than 1000 rural houses, which is not exactly a big issue... 😉

 

This doesn't sound like something out of the realms of possibility if CART actually believed it needs to happen and took the whole thing seriously. But I guess they're so busy fire-fighting all the emergency stoppages caused by lack of maintenance and budget problems that nobody's got any real time to focus on this properly... 😞

Edited May 3, 2022 by IanD

[Mike Todd]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

 

Assuming that cost is correct (which seems a lot more reasonable than the £1M for 10 points quoted earlier...) let's try and work out how many charging points would be needed, on the basis that a recharge might be needed at least every other night when cruising all day (which is what I worked out when doing a power audit).

 

Depending on how many boats actually cruise as opposed to staying moored most of the time (not that many, I think...) and how they're spread around the system (more in popular areas, but still enough in lightly-used ones) I come up with a hand-waving estimate of somewhere between 1000 and 2000 charging points for the whole network, which might cost between £5M and £10M to install.

 

Which sounds a lot, but it's less than 5% of CARTs annual budget -- and even if (for example) this was financed as a "green boating surcharge" it would come out as less than £300 per boat, which hardly seems excessive.

 

Even in rural locations there are always power lines near or crossing the canal at regular intervals to supply houses, and we're not talking about high-speed 100kW+ charging points here, the loads per charging point are similar to or smaller than one house (assuming a 32A point). On average that's one every 1-2 miles around the system, but obviously they're more likely to be installed in groups except in rural areas or lightly used canals. I'd expect that (like car charging points) you'd be able to see which ones were available/working using the internet, and ideally to book a charging slot in advance so you know one will be free when you need it.

 

Even if these figures are an underestimate (e.g. £10000 per point for 7kW/32A) the numbers are still not big compared to the CART budget or taken as a "green surcharge" amount per boat -- and bear in mind this doesn't all get done in one year, it would take quite a few years to roll out (5?) so the costs per year would be much lower. Viewed another way, it's the same size problem as getting power to at less than 1000 rural houses, which is not exactly a big issue... 😉

 

This doesn't sound like something out of the realms of possibility if CART actually believed it needs to happen and took the whole thing seriously. But I guess they're so busy fire-fighting all the emergency stoppages caused by lack of maintenance and budget problems that nobody's got any real time to focus on this properly... 😞

If the experience of pumpouts is anything to go by, you would need to factor in a very hight level of maintenance. Recovering the cost via pricing is complex.

[IanD]

9 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

If the experience of pumpouts is anything to go by, you would need to factor in a very hight level of maintenance. Recovering the cost via pricing is complex.

 

Why do you think charging points are as prone to failure as pumpouts? Why is charging for the power complex?

 

Experience of car charging stations suggests the opposite, that availability is pretty good for ones with properly designed billing systems (which is usually where the problem is) like Tesla, and that payment/cost recovery is actually pretty simple.

 

Electrons are a lot easier and cleaner to move around than liquefied sh*t... 😉

Edited May 3, 2022 by IanD

[cuthound]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

 

Assuming that cost is correct (which seems a lot more reasonable than the £1M for 10 points quoted earlier...) let's try and work out how many charging points would be needed, on the basis that a recharge might be needed at least every other night when cruising all day (which is what I worked out when doing a power audit).

 

Depending on how many boats actually cruise as opposed to staying moored most of the time (not that many, I think...) and how they're spread around the system (more in popular areas, but still enough in lightly-used ones) I come up with a hand-waving estimate of somewhere between 1000 and 2000 charging points for the whole network, which might cost between £5M and £10M to install.

 

Which sounds a lot, but it's less than 5% of CARTs annual budget -- and even if (for example) this was financed as a "green boating surcharge" it would come out as less than £300 per boat, which hardly seems excessive.

 

Even in rural locations there are always power lines near or crossing the canal at regular intervals to supply houses, and we're not talking about high-speed 100kW+ charging points here, the loads per charging point are similar to or smaller than one house (assuming a 32A point). On average that's one every 1-2 miles around the system, but obviously they're more likely to be installed in groups except in rural areas or lightly used canals. I'd expect that (like car charging points) you'd be able to see which ones were available/working using the internet, and ideally to book a charging slot in advance so you know one will be free when you need it.

 

Even if these figures are an underestimate (e.g. £10000 per point for 7kW/32A) the numbers are still not big compared to the CART budget or taken as a "green surcharge" amount per boat -- and bear in mind this doesn't all get done in one year, it would tike quite a few years to roll out (5?) so the costs per year would be much lower. Viewed another way, it's the same size problem as getting power to about 1000 rural houses, which is not exactly a big issue... 😉

 

This doesn't sound like something out of the realms of possibility if CART actually believed it needs to happen and took the whole thing seriously. But I guess they're so busy fire-fighting all the emergency stoppages caused by lack of maintenance and budget problems that nobody's got any real time to focus on this properly... 😞

 

The cost was a rough estimate used 10 years ago. How much have labour, copper, steel and plastic costs risen since then, 50%?

 

I think you have over estimated the number of location for charging points. I think they would need to be say 4 hours cruising apart to minimise cost, rather like the distance between sanitary stations.

 

There are about 2000 mike's of CRT waterways and 1600 locks, so 3600 lock miles, which would take 1200 hours of cruising at 3 mph.

 

So if we had a charging location every 4 hours cruising, we would need 400 charging locations. How many points would be needed at each location is debatable, obviously more at honeypot sites than for example on the HNC or Chesterfield.

 

You have ignored the cost of running cables in rural locations. This is mega expensive. I'm sure @Alan de Enfield had a fairly recent cost for providing power to his rural house.

 

However as you say it need not be a vastly costly exercise, especially if it was done one region or popular cruising route at a time spread over a few years.

 

 

35 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

If the experience of pumpouts is anything to go by, you would need to factor in a very hight level of maintenance. Recovering the cost via pricing is complex.

 

I would have thought vandalism and theft would be more of a problem than misuse.

 

After all you can't inadvertently block a socket by putting things you haven't first eaten in it. 😅

Edited May 3, 2022 by cuthound
Clarification

[David Mack]

7 minutes ago, cuthound said:

especially if it was done one region at a time spread over a few years.

If its done regionally, that would be fine for hire boats in that region, but would be of no benefit to private boaters who like to travel extensively over the network. So I think you would need to provide chargers - at least sparsley - across the whole network, then later add additional chargers both to infill between the initial locations and to increase the provision at popular sites.

Edited May 3, 2022 by David Mack

[cuthound]

Just now, David Mack said:

If its done regionally, that would be fine for hire boats in that region, but would be of no benefit to private boaters who like to travel extensively over the network. So I think you would need to provide chargers - at least sparsley - across the whole network, then later add additional chargers both to infill between the initial locations and to increase the provision at popular sites.

 

Yes I was typing too quickly for my brain and amended it as soon as I posted it to include popular cruising routes as well.

 

[ditchcrawler]

4 hours ago, Murflynn said:

I see wot u did there.   😉

 

 

 

 

 

.............   agree entirely with the content but the avatar is bleeding offal.

I didn't

 

[IanD]

29 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

The cost was a rough estimate used 10 years ago. How much have labour, copper, steel and plastic costs risen since then, 50%?

 

I think you have over estimated the number of location for charging points. I think they would need to be say 4 hours cruising apart to minimise cost, rather like the distance between sanitary stations.

 

There are about 2000 mike's of CRT waterways and 1600 locks, so 3600 lock miles, which would take 1200 hours of cruising at 3 mph.

 

So if we had a charging location every 4 hours cruising, we would need 400 charging locations. How many points would be needed at each location is debatable, obviously more at honeypot sites than for example on the HNC or Chesterfield.

 

You have ignored the cost of running cables in rural locations. This is mega expensive. I'm sure @Alan de Enfield had a fairly recent cost for providing power to his rural house.

 

However as you say it need not be a vastly costly exercise, especially if it was done one region or popular cruising route at a time spread over a few years.

 

 

 

I would have thought vandalism and theft would be more of a problem than misuse.

 

After all you can't inadvertently block a socket by putting things you haven't first eaten in it. 😅

 

The cost of some things (copper, labour) has gone up in the last 10 years. The cost of others (the electronics and wireless comms for charging points) has gone down, driven by EV chargers.

 

1000-2000 was my estimate of number of charging points, not locations -- as I said (and you agree with) they'd often be grouped, not in singles per location.

 

I haven't ignored the cost of running cables in rural locations, but the situation is not the same as Alan's house where they had to route a supply to exactly his house location when there was no supply nearby. On the canals you would place rural chargers wherever there was any mains supply nearby, for example a place where power already crosses the canal on the way to somewhere else (there are plenty of these), or where there is a house or village or shop or pub next to the canal. I think there would be few places so remote that power had to be run a long distance -- and so long as there aren't many, this doesn't add to the overall cost too much.

 

If vandalism and theft are a real problem, there's far more money to be made from EV chargers -- where you have a car conveniently placed to take the booty away -- than on the canals. Since each charger needs a wireless link anyway, it would also to trivial to put motion-sensing cameras on each charger to record any scroats, which would help reduce the problem but wouldn't eliminate it.

 

Rollout would be initially sparsely across the whole network, which is OK since there won't be many E-boats to use them at first, like EV car chargers -- they just have to be close enough to get from one to the next on a charge, and any sensible boat will have plenty of solar to help extend the range. As the numbers of boats go up then so would the number of chargers to cope.

 

Don't forget that this whole problem is at least 100x (maybe 1000x...) smaller than that for EVs, which *will* be solved because it has to be... 😉

Edited May 3, 2022 by IanD

[George and Dragon]

On 30/04/2022 at 17:08, Alan de Enfield said:

 

But, with a high depreciation as the diesel powered boat will be all but worthless in 2050 when it must either be modified to a zero emission propulsion system, or, be taken off the water.

True, but 100% depreciation over 27 years is pretty good. What will actually happen is prices will continue to rise until the point when charging stations get installed or everyone gets scared that they're paying over the odds for something they're not going to be able to use...

I would not want my children to buy a diesel powered boat after 2035

[IanD]

6 minutes ago, George and Dragon said:

True, but 100% depreciation over 27 years is pretty good. What will actually happen is prices will continue to rise until the point when charging stations get installed or everyone gets scared that they're paying over the odds for something they're not going to be able to use...

I would not want my children to buy a diesel powered boat after 2035

 

The position for canals will be exactly the same as EVs on the road, how rapidly they displace ICE will be heavily driven by government legislation, including taxation (e.g. on fuel), ULEV zones (e.g. in London). There's probably no need to ban diesels by banning them from the roads/canals, they'll just be made increasingly unattractive (and expensive) to carry on with -- which probably means the secondhand value will drop because nobody wants them any more, apart from a few diehard diesel-heads... 😉

 

At the same time EVs will continue to get cheaper and better, and -- assuming that charging points do happen -- the market for new diesel-powered boats will collapse, but there will be existing ones on the canals for many years.

 

The fact that the total emissions of boats in the UK are 100x lower than cars is unlikely to stop this, because diesels will be seen as environmentally bad in all types of applications where they can be replaced by something cleaner, and policies will come in to make this happen.

[George and Dragon]

2 hours ago, IanD said:

This doesn't sound like something out of the realms of possibility if CART actually believed it needs to happen and took the whole thing seriously. But I guess they're so busy fire-fighting all the emergency stoppages caused by lack of maintenance and budget problems that nobody's got any real time to focus on this properly... 😞

In reality they're focussed on getting people to events such as the 'launch' of the new e-shuttle between Marsden railway station and the Visitor Centre. Plenty of people there, no room for any on boats unless they'd moored by the station.
I don't believe CRT know how to get more people interested in boating - maybe they hope there will be some kind of osmosis from these events onto the water.

[IanD]

1 minute ago, George and Dragon said:

In reality they're focussed on getting people to events such as the 'launch' of the new e-shuttle between Marsden railway station and the Visitor Centre. Plenty of people there, no room for any on boats unless they'd moored by the station.
I don't believe CRT know how to get more people interested in boating - maybe they hope there will be some kind of osmosis from these events onto the water.

 

If the government put "rolling out charge stations across the network" as one of CARTs KPIs which they have to meet to get their government grant money, you can bet this would focus their minds PDQ... 😉

 

If CART/gov.uk don't want to cough up the money, it could be quite easy to get it privately funded -- make it a condition of a company being allowed to roll out lucrative EV charging networks on the roads that they contribute (for example) 1% of this spend to a canal charging network fund. Again this needs CART/gov interest/focus to make it happen though, and there's no sign of either... 😞

[cuthound]

14 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

The cost of some things (copper, labour) has gone up in the last 10 years. The cost of others (the electronics and wireless comms for charging points) has gone down, driven by EV chargers.

 

1000-2000 was my estimate of number of charging points, not locations -- as I said (and you agree with) they'd often be grouped, not in singles per location.

 

I haven't ignored the cost of running cables in rural locations, but the situation is not the same as Alan's house where they had to route a supply to exactly his house location when there was no supply nearby. On the canals you would place rural chargers wherever there was any mains supply nearby, for example a place where power already crosses the canal on the way to somewhere else (there are plenty of these), or where there is a house or village or shop or pub next to the canal. I think there would be few places so remote that power had to be run a long distance -- and so long as there aren't many, this doesn't add to the overall cost too much.

 

If vandalism and theft are a real problem, there's far more money to be made from EV chargers -- where you have a car conveniently placed to take the booty away -- than on the canals. Since each charger needs a wireless link anyway, it would also to trivial to put motion-sensing cameras on each charger to record any scroats, which would help reduce the problem but wouldn't eliminate it.

 

Rollout would be initially sparsely across the whole network, which is OK since there won't be many E-boats to use them at first, like EV car chargers -- they just have to be close enough to get from one to the next on a charge, and any sensible boat will have plenty of solar to help extend the range. As the numbers of boats go up then so would the number of chargers to cope.

 

Don't forget that this whole problem is at least 100x (maybe 1000x...) smaller than that for EVs, which *will* be solved because it has to be... 😉

 

Whilst i agree with much of what you say above, you cannot simply pick up a connection where a cable (usually HV) crosses a canal. If no power was available locally, then it would have to come from the nearest substation, which itself may need upgrading.

 

Theft of BEV charging cables is already happening.  Give  most BEV chsrging stations are in populated areas and canal ones would be in rural areas and the cables longer, I expect thieves would target boats over cars.

 

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-10530305/Now-thieves-new-target-electric-cars-charger-cable.html

 

Rolling out charging points sparsely across the whole network is a recipe for them falling into disuse. It makes more sense to put them on a popular route or a local area forst a d develop from that. People will be encouraged to buy electric boats if they see others using them.

 

Using the recent real life cost of installing a power cable from @Alan de Enfield should enable a rough cost per distance unit to be established, but as I said it is not insubstantial. 10 years ago I was paying the DNO's large sums to run cables to substations (which the company I was working for built and provided all equipment for except the supply cable) within new sites.