Most Inspiring Proven Hybrid ?

Discussion in 'Hybrid' started by Questor, Aug 19, 2010.

  1. apex1

    apex1 Guest

    Skimp on that in my case, but thank you.

    Building boats for more than three decades now, I am well informed what comes up on the market, long before the public press is. You must not tell me about Kite propulsion or Diesel electric, or what so ever you can imagine.
    From steam to hydrogen, I have operated, and/or built, or at least tested, everything on the market, except nuclear power.

    The HO systems do work, there is no doubt, but the regen. does not on a boat.

    You can turn it as you like, there is no sensible working system on the market which would be comparable with a simple Diesel and prop. period

    All the opposite claims, are nothing but drivel, or comparing apples and oranges.

    We have handled this topic so many times now, that it became quite boring to repeat the same old song every week.

    Use the search function of the forum to read everything which was said, proven, calculated and backed by facts, and you see you are many, many years away from a sensible, working system.

    Your car analogy shows clearly that you have not grasped these systems btw.

    Richard
     
  2. Pierre R
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    Pierre R Senior Member

    What oceandreams seem to lack here is any comprehension of how much energy it takes to push a boat.

    Oceandreams if you want to push a boat think 150KW not 1KW and think 24/7 for days on end.

    Wind Generators produce around 0.1KW on average and solar panels 0.045KW
     
  3. arn0
    Joined: Oct 2009
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    arn0 Junior Member

    let's wait 5 more years

    I think we got something quite close (speed continually changing) on small recreational sport boats, so that might be a relevant application.
    Another easier application could be on river boats, where charging stations every x miles would allow pure electric transportation.

    From my (non expert at all) understanding the electric technology is limited by the weight/costs of the battery and by efficiency/cost/weight of the generator.

    I'd love to think that in a reasonable 5 years timeframe, the "all electric" big move of the car industry will provide us with some cheap reliable breakthrough components to use in other industries.

    On the battery side, it is fair to hope that the automotive mass market will offer us the performance of a lithium battery for the cost we pay now for a lead acid one.
    http://www.hybridcars.com/economics/electric-car-battery-costs-dont-believe-them-27915.html
    That should help the weight&price equation; and within some more 5 years (so 10 years from now?) maybe solve it.

    On the generator side, the Voltec chain in the Chevy Volt for example seems to embed a cheap 55kw 50kg or so generator. It is the object of a lot of research to optimize its efficiency: http://gm-volt.com/2010/08/23/gm-ac...ons-for-next-generation-chevy-volt-generator/
     
  4. apex1

    apex1 Guest

    You got that wrong. We do NEVER see something close, because we do not recover energy by braking!

    The time frame you gave seems to a bit optimistic, but we have other restrictions too. Lithium is not easily available, nor cheap.

    So, the thread title remains completely a pipe dream, there is neither a inspiring, nor a proven hybrid in sight.

    The GM volt was probably the worst vehicle one could mention btw....
     
  5. arn0
    Joined: Oct 2009
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    arn0 Junior Member

    Regarding the energy recovery when braking, couldn't we add an flywheel in the chain so there would actually be something to electromagneticaly slow down to regenerate energy?
    Something between the small 100kg flywheel battery that stores 3kWh and the bigger 3ton 10kWh one used on trains?

    Regarding the availability of Lithium I think that is not our problem but the one of the car-industry. They seem to want to mass market something so they will have to solve that. Might be Lithium, might be another tech.
    Point is there will be a good performance cheap enough mass-marketed battery we should be able to benefit from in that 5 years time frame.
    Or the big electric-car industry move is a big lie!
     
  6. apex1

    apex1 Guest

    Oh gawd.....will it never end? Use the search function, you will find all that premature nonsense perfectly coped with..........
     
  7. arn0
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    arn0 Junior Member

    Agreed on the flywheel regenerating non-sense. was just an idea while writing, a bad one I confess. haven’t think about it before.

    Anyway, regenerating when braking is just a nice optimization. Even if an electric or hybrid propulsion does not benefit from regenerating, it still has a couple of big advantages.

    You proposed somewhere to meet in 20 years... I hope we can meet in 5 and 10 years to see how we could leverage the progress made on the automotive mass market into the boat industry.

    Still won’t be for everyone, quite certainly not for ocean crossing, but I guess it will have moved from what it is now (some expensive tech demonstrators or politically correct tourist applications) to a vast variety of recreational boats, river boats, sailboats applications.
     
  8. Stumble
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    Stumble Senior Member

    Arn,

    Here is the problem, when a boat leaves the slip it must carry with it all of the power it will need for the duration of its trip (except sailboats of course).

    There is the problem that must be solved for electric boats to be reasonable and at present no such system exists. Even the best labratory batteries, or energy storage systems do not come within an oder of magnitude of storing the amount of power diesel fuel does. Heck even if we could use C4 plastic explosives as fuel instead of diesel, it wouldn't have enough power density to replace current fuel sources (though it is close at about 1/3 the power density of diesel fuel).

    I would love to see such a system, heck I have investors lined up around the block wanting to invest is such a system. Buyers willing to pay right now for an electric boat, but there is just not a practical solution now, or for the forseable future.
     
  9. arn0
    Joined: Oct 2009
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    arn0 Junior Member

    We're not saying contradictory things i think, just not talking about the same use:

    - Going recreational is a few hours at best. A number of trips are 1h, 2h, ... or even 4h but only a fraction of it at high speed, rest of it just anchoring or going at no-wake speed. It was the same when the electric car appeared: not targeting everyone, but those doing 50 miles a day to commute.

    - River boat are low speed and dont need to carry all the power for their multi-day trip since they could plug along the road and charge during the night.

    For those type of use the battery storage will make sense when good performance/weight/price will come together in the few next years.
    We are indead an order of magniture away right now... by a factor 5 i think.
    Just hopping the multi-billion investment the car-industry is making now will pay back with some breakthrough things later.
     
  10. Things are a little different in my opinion. Without going into calculus of complicated differential equations you are basically forgetting the energetical contribution of a series of factors such as energy recovery of inertial forces in decelerating and passive phases, (recent example is the Formula 1 BMW with KERS regenerative braking) and propeller drag in the upmentioned situation. Even tides can be used to recharge batteries, drop the anchor in a coefficient 101 tide and watch the miracle take place.
    This, together with a careful selection of the recharging times, the use of the diesel just in low torque request situations (HSD) and some good on board electronics to manage all this, significantly alter the energy balance equations and the overall fuel consumption.
    I am showing a little bit of this technology in my thread, in the signature.
     
  11. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Keel motor. I believe you unplug the keel after sailing and charge
     

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  12. Pierre R
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    Pierre R Senior Member

    The problem here that most seem to not understand is the amount of energy needed to even push the average crusing boat at slow speeds. Its orders of magnitude greater than pushing a car. One to two hours is 7 to 14 miles. Think 20-40KWH. Now you plug into a 30 amp 120v service and try to replace that in a matter of hours let alone a tide.
     
  13. apex1

    apex1 Guest

    Maybe our nanni promoter was just joking? If not, he would feed my doubt about his "engineer" background. Tides to recharge batteries? Yeah, sure..... and that would be a favourable anchorage, on top of being very efficient......

    Nothing new, just the sales drivel is polished up differently from company to company. And none of them is able to skimp on the car "analogy" which does not exist.
    So, they are either impertinent liars, or do not have a clue what they are talking.

    Pick your poison.....

    Regards
    Richard
     
  14. YankeeTexan
    Joined: Nov 2010
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    YankeeTexan Junior Member

    Hello all...this is my first post on here...
    I am interested in the efficiency differences between pounds of energy storage on the boat to propulsion thrust-hour energy out of the prop for diesel/IC engine vs. battery/electric motor at different points of operation: different speeds and for different sized boats. I want to understand how to figure that out. I want to then see how many lb of energy storage is required for various lengths of times and what is the distance traveled. In reading the posts of the naysayers, I agree with and appreciate their comments in their given contexts however there are many contexts i.e. applications that were not considered. I am not convinced that a hybrid system is not a viable solution for certain applications.

    Also, I am very familiar with regenerative fuel cell systems and solar to hydrogen storage. NASA, DARPA, MDA, DOE and the other big government programs are the only ones that can afford such systems...for now anyways. It would take over 4 acres of solar panels to fuel 2 fuel cell busses each traveling 300 miles a day with current commercially viable technology at a cost of about $2M and several tons of equipment to store 65 kg of hydrogen @ 10,000psig. If the buses were battery operated...4 acres of solar panels could fuel 8 busses but they'd have to refuel 8 more times that day to go the same 300 mile distance...which means batteries are 3 times more efficient but their energy storage density per pound is much, much less.

    cheers
     

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