Hybrid drive conversion question

[Alan de Enfield]

51 minutes ago, IanD said:

If you fill up with water only every two weeks you must have the world's biggest water tank, or smell quite badly, or both.

 

Our NB had a 1000 litre tank

 

 

52 minutes ago, IanD said:

Maybe your lack of knowledge about how some other people travel on the canals is showing...

 

Having cruised widely on many of the canals and also the rivers from the Thames to the Humber as a boat owner for 40 years and for much of the year, not as a hirer for a couple of weeks a year, I think that it is your knowledge of the 'ordinary boater' that is lacking.

[Paul C]

I don't think its down to knowledge, more a lack of empathy - in other words, being able to put yourself in the shoes of others and considering what the situation might look like from their point of view.

 

 

[Bargebuilder]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

Many holidaymakers and CCers don't stop at a random place on the towpath (though some do), they stop near a pub or town or village, and top up with water every couple of days -- they'll need to do the same with power. If you want to stop in the middle of nowhere, you'll need to think more carefully about charging, just like filling a water tank.

Alan does have a good point.

We fill out water tanks every two weeks and always find quiet, rural spots as far away from pubs and villages as possible to moor.

 

Village/town moorings are invariably full of continuous moorers with the few available spaces filled by holiday mskers by early afternoon.

 

If the proposal is to make existing visitor moorings into charging points, will the live-aboards who currently hog town moorings respect their intended use?

[Tacet]

10 hours ago, IanD said:

 

Something like £5k per bollard total (£10k for two) doesn't seem unreasonable. An overnight charge would probably net about £10 profit, assuming they add a big premium to the cost per kWh. Depending on how many night per year they're occupied -- probably quite a lot of it's a popular pub! -- this would break even after a few years (500 overnight stays?) and make money after this.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, IanD said:

 

So this means maybe a thousand boats plugged in at any one time, perhaps double that at most. So a few thousand charging points should be fine to allow for at most 50% occupancy, certainly no more than 5000 or so.

 

 

On a £10 gross profit per go basis - a 1000 boats using a total of 5,000 charging points would mean about it required 8 years before, even in simple terms, for the initial £5k to be recovered.

 

Allowing for some cost of collecting payment, maintenance and renewal, interest on capital, and it does not make good financial sense even on £5k per bollard (which seems light to me).

 

If you are a pub or restaurant landlord, would you allow non-electric boats to use the mooring?  If not, several evenings a week you could be turning away trade.  If so, it would take you longer to recover your capital.

[Bargebuilder]

The most difficult problems to solve might the the rivers, for example the Avon or even worse the Nene. Imagine motoring upstream against a 1 or 2mph current and wanting to achieve a minimum of 2-3mph over the ground. That would use a lot more than 3Kw.

 

You could be doing that for 4 days straight, with almost zero visitor moorings, let alone ones with electricity nearby. Private land on both banks with 'no mooring' signs everywhere that vegetation doesn't make stopping impossible. 

 

If the river authorities have been unable to negotiate with land owners a patch of bank simply clear of scrub, then there is surely not much hope of them being able to create charging stations. 

[Paul C]

2 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

The most difficult problems to solve might the the rivers, for example the Avon or even worse the Nene. Imagine motoring upstream against a 1 or 2mph current and wanting to achieve a minimum of 2-3mph over the ground. That would use a lot more than 3Kw.

 

You could be doing that for 4 days straight, with almost zero visitor moorings, let alone ones with electricity nearby. Private land on both banks with 'no mooring' signs everywhere that vegetation doesn't make stopping impossible. 

 

If the river authorities have been unable to negotiate with land owners a patch of bank simply clear of scrub, then there is surely not much hope of them being able to create charging stations. 

 

Indeed. But elsewhere than on this forum, there is probably a similar parallel debate surrounding coastal or sea going leisure boats, and their future iterations when diesel/ICE is no longer an option. A river cruiser, is somewhere in between a canal boat and a sea going boat in aspects such as power requirement, range etc.

[Quattrodave]

I spend all my time on a river, currently have a 900 litre diesel tank, if I relied on electric charging points I'd be really nervous with not many places to moor and possibly no space to moor due to others charging...

[Bargebuilder]

4 minutes ago, Paul C said:

 

Indeed. But elsewhere than on this forum, there is probably a similar parallel debate surrounding coastal or sea going leisure boats, and their future iterations when diesel/ICE is no longer an option. A river cruiser, is somewhere in between a canal boat and a sea going boat in aspects such as power requirement, range etc.

It's only the flat calm and no current flow of canal water, together with big voluminous narrowboats that make electric propulsion sensible for those that are able to afford the luxury.

 

Waves take energy to push through and tidal flow will mean that motors will consume far more electricity in order to maintain a sensible speed over the ground. Even wind is a bigger force to overcome at sea, where there are no trees or hedgerows to offer shelter.

 

The coastal cruisers that are most commonly used are much smaller than NBs with much less spare locker space for batteries and very little unobstructed roof area for solar panels. It's difficult to see how small and medium sized coastal cruisers could survive the change to battery power and electric motors.

[Alan de Enfield]

44 minutes ago, Tacet said:

 

On a £10 gross profit per go basis - a 1000 boats using a total of 5,000 charging points would mean about it required 8 years before, even in simple terms, for the initial £5k to be recovered.

 

Allowing for some cost of collecting payment, maintenance and renewal, interest on capital, and it does not make good financial sense even on £5k per bollard (which seems light to me).

 

If you are a pub or restaurant landlord, would you allow non-electric boats to use the mooring?  If not, several evenings a week you could be turning away trade.  If so, it would take you longer to recover your capital.

 

And of course you'll be paying the VAT man his share (20% ?) of the income, and then an additional 20% of your profits go in corporation tax.

[Alan de Enfield]

54 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

We fill out water tanks every two weeks and always find quiet, rural spots as far away from pubs and villages as possible to moor.

 

 

O' no you don't. You dirty scruffy erk - you refill your tank every two days Ian says so.

 

 

8 minutes ago, Quattrodave said:

I spend all my time on a river, currently have a 900 litre diesel tank,

 

O' no you haven't, you have an egg cup sized tank and refil it every two days, Ian says so.

[Bargebuilder]

24 minutes ago, Paul C said:

 

Indeed. But elsewhere than on this forum, there is probably a similar parallel debate surrounding coastal or sea going leisure boats, and their future iterations when diesel/ICE is no longer an option. A river cruiser, is somewhere in between a canal boat and a sea going boat in aspects such as power requirement, range etc.

There are far more coastal hobby vessels than inland waterways boats and I'd be surprised if it wasn't a much bigger and more valuable industry to the UK. If internal combustion engined coastal boats are not suitable for conversion to battery/electric motors and the government isn't able to protect this important sector, it's questionable as to whether they would pump money into the much smaller canal system.

[Bargebuilder]

8 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

O' no you don't. You dirty scruffy erk - you refill your tank every two days Ian says so.

We can't be the only ones with big water tanks, can we? I used to have a tiny narrow beam grp cruiser and even that had a 500l water tank capacity. Our barge carried two tonnes of water so we could cruise for a month without smelling too badly. 

 

But scruffy I may be on occasions😁

[IanD]

32 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

O' no you don't. You dirty scruffy erk - you refill your tank every two days Ian says so.

 

 

 

O' no you haven't, you have an egg cup sized tank and refil it every two days, Ian says so.

Alan, stop being a twat.

 

I said nothing of the sort, I just pointed out how some people who aren't you use their boats. As usual, you're doing a Peter and assuming that everyone is the same as you, and they're not. I'd have thought you'd have realised that in 40 years boating, but obviously not.

 

You do exactly the same whenever discussions about EVs come up, protesting how they don't work for you so they're rubbish -- the fact that you represent maybe 0.1% of drivers is completely lost on you.

Edited July 25, 2022 by IanD

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, IanD said:

Alan, stop being a twat.

 

I said nothing of the sort, I said how some people who aren't you use their boats. As usual, you're doing a Peter and assuming that everyone is the same as you, and they're not.

 

You do exactly the same whenever discussions about EVs come up, protesting how they don't work for you so they're rubbish -- the fact that you represent maybe 0.1% of drivers is completely lost on you.

 

Oh hang on.....

 

Mr  Perfect has lost it... 

 

Come on Ian calm down.....

 

Lets have less of the attacks on the person you so despise..🤣🤣🤣🤣

Edited July 25, 2022 by The Happy Nomad

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Tacet said:

 

On a £10 gross profit per go basis - a 1000 boats using a total of 5,000 charging points would mean about it required 8 years before, even in simple terms, for the initial £5k to be recovered.

 

Allowing for some cost of collecting payment, maintenance and renewal, interest on capital, and it does not make good financial sense even on £5k per bollard (which seems light to me).

 

If you are a pub or restaurant landlord, would you allow non-electric boats to use the mooring?  If not, several evenings a week you could be turning away trade.  If so, it would take you longer to recover your capital.

 

I keep saying that all these numbers are at best educated guesses; the simple fact is that if there's money to be made out of charging points they will appear, and if not they won't unless the government finds a way to finance them -- and if they don't do this, how are they going to actually deliver their stated policy of eventually removing diesel engines from the canals?

 

Could this just possibly be another empty hot air Tory policy which sounds good, but they've got no idea about how to make it happen, assuming they've given it a moment's thought?

[Bargebuilder]

3 minutes ago, IanD said:

Could this just possibly be another empty hot air Tory policy which sounds good, but they've got no idea about how to make it happen, assuming they've given it a moment's thought

I really hope they haven't given it much thought. There are so many hugely more important issues that should be occupying their every moment. How the privileged few who can afford NB's will cope once diesel engines are banned really should be pretty low on their list of priorities.

[MtB]

This is all as much to do with human psychology as anything. Given enough time the human mind can eventually persuade itself to come to terms with anything no matter how unpleasant, even death. 

 

We are in the early stages of being softened up by TPTB for the the end of narrowboating as we currently know it, unless we can figure out a new way of propelling, and in particular, heating our narrowboats/homes.

[Bargebuilder]

5 hours ago, MtB said:

We are in the early stages of being softened up by TPTB for the the end of narrowboating as we currently know it, unless we can figure out a new way of propelling, and in particular, heating our narrowboats/homes.

If heat pumps should prove to be the only alternative way to heat our homes other than fossil fuels, given the cost of the additional insulation and additional radiator surface area needed, plus the cost of the equipment, the current 'fuel poverty' crisis may prove to be just a 'taster' of what's to come.

 

If the BBC's figure of possibly 40% of households being in fuel poverty by October is true, where are these families going to get the money to covert their homes from?

 

Even now, many struggle to heat one room, so perhaps heat pump technology will make whole house heating a thing of the past for many more, or maybe even for the majority?

 

[IanD]

9 hours ago, MtB said:

This is all as much to do with human psychology as anything. Given enough time the human mind can eventually persuade itself to come to terms with anything no matter how unpleasant, even death. 

 

We are in the early stages of being softened up by TPTB for the the end of narrowboating as we currently know it, unless we can figure out a new way of propelling, and in particular, heating our narrowboats/homes.

 

This is all the same problem that will confront homeowners and drivers -- how to convert from fossil fuels to renewables -- but on a much smaller scale. It's already clear how some of this can be solved, and the answers will be the same -- electric power for propulsion and heat pumps for heating.

 

The challenge for boats is how to provide and store the (relatively small) amounts of energy needed, given that unlike houses (and plugged-in cars) a direct connection to the mains is unavailable. 

 

A combination of solar power and batteries and charging points can provide a solution, but some changes in behaviour will be needed because batteries don't store as much energy as hundreds of litres of diesel. Homeowners and car drivers will have to make changes, and narrowboaters will too. This will cost money, and a way needs to be found to support poor people in all these cases -- though the current government doesn't seem interested in doing this... 😞

 

I think that calling this "the end of narrowboating as we know it" is exaggerating rather... 😉

 

(unless this means "the end of narrowboating behind a solid fuel stove and in front of a big diesel tank", in which case it's probably true...)

Edited July 26, 2022 by IanD

[IanD]

3 hours ago, Bargebuilder said:

If heat pumps should prove to be the only alternative way to heat our homes other than fossil fuels, given the cost of the additional insulation and additional radiator surface area needed, plus the cost of the equipment, the current 'fuel poverty' crisis may prove to be just a 'taster' of what's to come.

 

If the BBC's figure of possibly 40% of households being in fuel poverty by October is true, where are these families going to get the money to covert their homes from?

 

Even now, many struggle to heat one room, so perhaps heat pump technology will make whole house heating a thing of the past for many more, or maybe even for the majority?

 

 

Heat pumps don't *need* more insulation, but given that their purpose is to save energy and reduce emissions it's crazy not to add this so a smaller heat pump can be used.

 

Fuel poverty today is a huge problem and paying for (and installing millions of) heat pumps is too, but what's the alternative -- carry on burning fossil fuels, like gas from Russia and oil from Saudi Arabia? There should be effective government support to help get the poor out of this particular hole, but there isn't... 😞

Edited July 26, 2022 by IanD

[MtB]

17 minutes ago, IanD said:

Heat pumps don't *need* more insulation, but given that their purpose is to save energy and reduce emissions it's crazy not to add this so a smaller heat pump can be used.

 

 

More specifically, in the domestic setting a heat pump big enough to just replace a gas or oil boiler size-for-size costs more than a smaller heat and some insulation, both to install and to run. This is why the media prattles on about heat pumps needing houses to be well insulated. 

[IanD]

Just now, MtB said:

 

 

More specifically, in the domestic setting a heat pump big enough to just replace a gas or oil boiler size-for-size costs more than a smaller heat and some insulation, both to install and to run. This is why the media prattles on about heat pumps needing houses to be well insulated. 

 

Absolutely, and the UK has some of the poorest insulated housing in Europe because of outdated regulations and construction methods, as well as terrible design standards 😞

 

Unless insulation is added to reduce losses bigger radiators are also needed because the hot water output is typically at 55C, considerably cooler than gas/oil CH systems -- which is another reason to improve insulation at the same time as fitting a heat pump.

 

Apart from the high costs, the biggest problem is that there are nowhere near enough installers, and no plan on how to fix this -- on one hand the government says they want to convert most households (more than 30M of them) to heat pumps in the near future which means more than a million installs per year, on the other there aren't enough installers or funds to actually do even a tenth of this. Big words with nothing behind them yet again... 😞

[cuthound]

16 hours ago, IanD said:

 

And the quote for £7600 that I provided was also ACTUAL charges for ACTUAL work done in the UK -- and in 2022, not 2005 when things may have been different. The earlier figures were UK prices too.

 

It looks to me like you were soundly ripped off... 😉

 

(or you needed an exceptionally huge amount of work to be done -- *and* were ripped off...)

 

You have one data point from what you paid a long time ago, in what could well have been an atypically expensive installation (but which was still close to £1000/kW). I provided both internal costs to the distribution network from a few years ago, and an actual figure for an installation on 2022, both were considerably lower than this.

 

The only way to be sure which is closer to reality would be for somebody to actually ask for a quote for a real canalside installation today. Until then, something like the £1000/kW estimate is probably as good as we're going to get -- and this would give a reasonable payback time and make charging points financially feasible.

 

Maybe the substation feeding AdeE's transformer in a pole needed upgrading too?

 

The DNO's can and do charge customers for all aspects of the upgrade if they possibly can.

[IanD]

Just now, cuthound said:

 

Maybe the substation feeding AdeE's transformer in a pole needed upgrading too?

 

The DNO's can and do charge customers for all aspects of the upgrade if they possibly can.

 

I'm sure they do, but looking at the typical installation charges in the big document I referred to (as well as the other references) it's difficult to understand why he was charged so much for a relatively low-power installation with no HV cabling.

 

I'm equally sure that any company rolling out charging stations wouldn't pay the same per installation as a one-off residential customer, because they'll have visibility of the actual costs incurred by the DNO and also would strike some kind of bulk-buy deal to push the costs down.

 

It would be interesting to know what the power installations in places like Llangollen and the Central London charging stations actually cost, if CART don't do the usual trick of refusing on the grounds of "commercial sensitivity"...

[Bargebuilder]

8 hours ago, IanD said:

 

Absolutely, and the UK has some of the poorest insulated housing in Europe because of outdated regulations and construction methods, as well as terrible design standards 😞

 

Unless insulation is added to reduce losses bigger radiators are also needed because the hot water output is typically at 55C, considerably cooler than gas/oil CH systems -- which is another reason to improve insulation at the same time as fitting a heat pump.

 

Apart from the high costs, the biggest problem is that there are nowhere near enough installers, and no plan on how to fix this -- on one hand the government says they want to convert most households (more than 30M of them) to heat pumps in the near future which means more than a million installs per year, on the other there aren't enough installers or funds to actually do even a tenth of this. Big words with nothing behind them yet again... 😞

If we are to believe the BBC and 40% of households will indeed soon be in fuel poverty, how many households will need a 3rd party to pay for upgraded insulation, larger radiators and a heat pump powerful enough to replace their current fossil fuel consuming boiler?

 

One of you will know what all of the above might cost, but how could any government fund such an upgrade for 40% of households, or even a proportion of it?