The Guardian article glosses over a few things that are actually interesting about this ship:
- It's made out of aluminum instead of steel. The resulting weight savings make it a bit more efficient. That's something this shipping yard specializes in.
- Because it is going to run in shallow water on the river Plate, it doesn't actually have propellers but a water jet propulsion system.
The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well. It can't do it under its own power; it's designed for a ~50km crossing, not a trans Pacific/Atlantic journey. At the time, they were thinking tug boats.
If it’s anything like the electric ferries that cross the Öresund beween Helsingborg and Helsingør, they grab charge while they’re unloading and loading at each terminal:
Each trip consumes approximately 1,175 kWh, which is nearly the same amount a residential home consumes in a month. In each port is a tower with a robot arm that connects the charging cable automatically every time the ship comes to the dock. The system charges 10.5 kV, 600Amp and 10.5MW. The batteries have a total capacity of 4,160 kWh, which means that we always have a surplus of electricity if for some reason we cannot load during a stop or if the transit takes more time than usual.
In Helsingör the ferries charge for approx. 6 minutes and in Helsingborg the ferries charge for approx. 9 minutes. This is enough to suffice for the journey across the strait.[1]
Side note: you can also charge your car on board from the boat’s batteries.
apparently, 40MWh of capacity is enough to travel 40 nautical miles. The distance between Tasmania and South America is around 6,500–7,500 nautical miles.
I would like to know its price. Here in the Azores Islands there was a project to replace an ICE ferry with an electric one but they couldn't agree on the price with the boat builders. It went up to as much as 35 million Euros but it ended up being cancelled as that, apparently, wasn't enough for a ferry that can do 1-1.5 hour crossings with a dozen cars or so.
It should take around 50 hours to fully charge its batteries under ideal conditions. That is 5 - 10 days realistically. I guess it's impractical considering that it will ferry across the River Plate.
Any flat surface on a ship that is designed for electric should be covered in flexible solar panels.
Why do this if it can’t fully charge the ship? To offset the costs of charging the ship at port, to provide longer range by providing a lower voltage power source for 12V DC charging (cell phones, iPads, 5w LED lights).
So the commenter is correct, she needs panels and the fact that this isn’t part of the launch shows that they were more interested in being first than practical.
Weight won't matter much (you typically only accelerate it once, and the additional drag is small), it is just that the surface area is so small relative to what's needed that it just doesn't move the needle.
It's not a long range vessel, but it should have a fairly long service life.
Additional weight and complexity on a one off boat would be more expensive than a seperate much more standard solar and battery system on land. And you might be able to get additional value out of selling electricity from an oversized storage.
It's not sensible to draw your system boundaries around the boat by itself; there is significant terminal infrastructure; and even grid electrical infrastructure to consider.
I’m not a sparky but would you need inverters if the panels are just for charging batteries? On the other hand, there is probably already inverters onboard to provide AC power to passenger power points.
No, you need some kind of DC converter to regulate voltage, but no inherent requirement to go to AC. Lots of small camping and off grid systems do that.
Although at the scale of a one off boat i would think it's cheaper to use the more widespread systems for bigger grid connected panel installations; so you are back to inverters.
The energy is not free, since the solar panels cost money and don't last forever. Even at optimistic prices, it's still something like 0.03 USD/kWh. Install them on a boat and they have to deal with constant vibrations, humid conditions, seagulls shitting all over them, etc etc etc.
I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
Do you have solar panels on top of your head? If not why do you leave that space unused? Space being there is one of the worst possible reasons. That bloats designs and makes them expensive to build and maintain.
Talk to a marine engineer about the overhead (equipment, training, emergency procedures, etc.) of adding a small-scale solar plant to all the things that they've already got to deal with on a ship.
And recall that this bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt... - will need a multi-billion dollar replacement, because the tiny engineering staff of a huge freighter could not diagnose and correct a surprise electrical failure. Within the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the initial fault, and when the collision became physically inevitable.
Does anyone have a feel for how heavy the weight of an equivalent oil(?) driven ship would be? It has the big number for the weight of batteries, but I've got nothing to compare against.
Spent a few months down in Hobart sussing out an antarctic science degree- really cool marine industry nexus down there with world leading research, all of the antarctic operations, and this stuff. Definitely the most nautical feeling city in Australia
- It's made out of aluminum instead of steel. The resulting weight savings make it a bit more efficient. That's something this shipping yard specializes in.
- Because it is going to run in shallow water on the river Plate, it doesn't actually have propellers but a water jet propulsion system.
Fully charged did a video on the construction of this ship early last year: https://fullycharged.show/episodes/electric-ferry-the-larges...
The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well. It can't do it under its own power; it's designed for a ~50km crossing, not a trans Pacific/Atlantic journey. At the time, they were thinking tug boats.
The other is: when will they charge? Does this ship not run at night?
Each trip consumes approximately 1,175 kWh, which is nearly the same amount a residential home consumes in a month. In each port is a tower with a robot arm that connects the charging cable automatically every time the ship comes to the dock. The system charges 10.5 kV, 600Amp and 10.5MW. The batteries have a total capacity of 4,160 kWh, which means that we always have a surplus of electricity if for some reason we cannot load during a stop or if the transit takes more time than usual.
In Helsingör the ferries charge for approx. 6 minutes and in Helsingborg the ferries charge for approx. 9 minutes. This is enough to suffice for the journey across the strait.[1]
Side note: you can also charge your car on board from the boat’s batteries.
[1] https://www.oresundslinjen.com/about-us/sustainability
Compared to that, €35m or so for a new modern vessel doesn't sound outrageous.
[0] https://www.morski.hr/jadrolinija-za-7-7-milijuna-eura-kupuj...
Why do this if it can’t fully charge the ship? To offset the costs of charging the ship at port, to provide longer range by providing a lower voltage power source for 12V DC charging (cell phones, iPads, 5w LED lights).
So the commenter is correct, she needs panels and the fact that this isn’t part of the launch shows that they were more interested in being first than practical.
Additional weight and complexity on a one off boat would be more expensive than a seperate much more standard solar and battery system on land. And you might be able to get additional value out of selling electricity from an oversized storage.
It's not sensible to draw your system boundaries around the boat by itself; there is significant terminal infrastructure; and even grid electrical infrastructure to consider.
Although at the scale of a one off boat i would think it's cheaper to use the more widespread systems for bigger grid connected panel installations; so you are back to inverters.
At least capture some of that to charge some batteries or extend the length of your voyage.
I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
And recall that this bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt... - will need a multi-billion dollar replacement, because the tiny engineering staff of a huge freighter could not diagnose and correct a surprise electrical failure. Within the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the initial fault, and when the collision became physically inevitable.
Same ship, originally specced to carry tens of thousands of liters of oil. No overall displacement number, oddly.