The Slow Pace of Change

Good article in Soundings: Trade Only, on the current state of boat designs. Only one , "it's amazing" . Anyway a good discussion from designers on what builders and owners want in their boats. A lot of innovation is not a popular idea..
https://www.tradeonlytoday.com/post-type-feature/the-slow-pace-of-change?_hsmi=287598484

 

Spot on article, enjoyed it very much.

Those boats and cross sections of the marine industry are foreign to me, but my little corner of the world has very similar things.

Complex systems, propulsion, electronics, deck gear that were all the rage 10 years ago are now liabilities and decrease the overall retained value. As we down turn the boats retaining value are single and built with reliability and ease of repair as the prime concern.

The sea is a funny thing, as we find new and exciting ways to conquer the sea. fFather time pairs with it the reminder that dependability is still the seafarers greatest design feature.

 

Truer words were never spoken. Don't mess with King Neptune or Mother Nature.

 

We've been wrestling with the design of various hybrid and all-electric boats over the last few years. Slow and fast (>40 knots) with displacements ranging from 50 mtons to 250 mtons. Crew vessels and passenger ferries. Not one of them has been built yet....tough nut to crack meeting the operational requirements. If there is a breakthrough in battery technology that dramatically reduces their weight, we'll be ready with viable vessel designs. Until then....the danged batteries are just too heavy.

 

"Electrification" or 'Electric Revolution' (2025/35-) is a very very exciting issue;

but one thing is for example the solar panels and LiFePO4 batteries and another different issue is for example the engine, in my case (my interest is in small sailboats) i see difficult to replace a Suzuki 2.5 outboard engine that is a small beast with a tremendous force.

 

A friend of mine, a Scottish fisherman, in a fairly remote village, has just converted his boat to electric, with PV on the boat. Interesting that it is a bottom up project, not top down. The biggest difficulty has been certification. The film , made by another villager, is not released yet, but heres the trailer.

 

Full Electrification is driven by the lies of salesmen, repeated by credulous non-educated but well meaning folks, and enthusiastically taken up by researchers looking for grants, and engineers looking for paychecks. It's not even theoretically possible, whatever lies the professional liars may sell.

 

The yard in Norway that I've worked with for over 30 years has delivered a number of all-electric tourist cruise and passenger ferry vessels. We are trying to leverage those successes and experience to produce higher speed versions. That's where the battery weight gets us...

 

Previous life almost forgotten to the cobwebs of time, grad school peers went to either the national lab or nuScale. If we're able to safely take solid state into propulsion like cargo ship and cruise liners I could see energy densities make real sense in electric. Dunno if in my lifetime the jump will be made.

Current electric craze predominantly involves the euphoria from offshoring consequences. No free lunch, just trade offs.

Listened to a rather long talk some years ago about how much larger the footprint of pollution was manufacturing new. The argument being many times refit and rebuild of even older technologies was a net benefit. Linking it to the trend line of slow proven technologies regaining market dominance, ease of repair is also coming back into vogue. John deere has taken a beating in my industry by adding "smart" accessories requiring a service call to flash repair items traditionally not needed. Have also seen a trend where bigger boats are doing significant rebuilds for near the same price as a new tier generators.

Other trend observed has been in screens, was aboard a fairly new vessel early this month. It was noticeable how much cleaner the helm was. Looks like gone are the days of stacked screens looking like the starship enterprise.

 

After CATL, this is the second company I see promoting Sodium batteries.

Electric Bike – TAILG https://tailg.cc/electric-bike/

Jules Verne's Submarine (1870) is said to have carried Sodium batteries:

Nautilus, Fictional Submarine:

"Electricity provided by sodium/mercury batteries (with the sodium provided by extraction from seawater) is the craft's primary power source for propulsion and other services."

Nautilus (fictional submarine) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus_(fictional_submarine)

"Swedish battery maker Northvolt has developed its first sodium-ion battery in partnership with Uppsala University spinoff Altris"

Northvolt unveils 160 Wh/kg sodium-ion battery https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/22/northvolt-unveils-160-wh-kg-sodium-ion-battery/

Cambrian Explosion (2025/35-) (?!)

Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion

 

There are some ferry lines in Berlin going full electric since years. Sometimes I use one of them. Solar panels on the roofs, 60m², 10.6 kW power. Berlin lies in northern Germany, not very sunny here. In spite of this the shore power take in (over night only) is 22,000 kWh per year, which means 0.83 Euros per operating hour.
capacity: passengers 35 to 49, 2 wheel chairs, 10 bicycles, speed 12 km/h.
20 metric tonnes.

Our ferry line is also "towed" without any roop. This is done by a electromagnetic coupling of the ship to the (steel) pier (just a small "dang" and she sits fixed). There is only one guy at the helm (without wheel) no other crew. 2 pod motors, 10 kW each, separately controlled, allow for fine tuned steering.

The use of the ferry is cheap. It is integrated in the ticket system of the public transport (BVG). A single use is 2 Euros. No additional charge for ferry if you are going by public transport. When I use it - I come with S-Bahn (electric), then tram (electric) then ferry (electric). A way of nearly 2 hours for 2 Euros.


Berlin https://www.e-faehren.de/e-faehren/berlin

 

Now that appears to be the perfect rational application for an electric ferry; relatively small and slow slender-hull displacement craft. The one's we've had a challenge to design in to reality would carry 250+ passengers at 40+ knots with at least a 50 nm range between short-period fast charging. A tough nut to crack...

 

That is an interesting observation.I wonder how much of the change is attributable to the demonstrated reliability of the recent electronics.Probably no bad thing to keep an independent battery powered GPS unit in a drawer,just in case.

 

The advent and proliferation of multi-function displays has really cleaned things up, especially after their adoption by the "big boys" like Garmin, Mercury, Raymarine, and Simrad. We are delivering our vessel control systems without a dedicated "OEM" display much more often than not these days.

 

It's nice around the 15-16 inch range I can do two in conjunction with single computer screen to run our software, finally see out windows again. Furuno ownes the overwhelming majority of the wheelhouse up here.

Not sure how far that little electric fishing boat runs, or how light and small it's gear is. Probably possible for short small runs and light gear. We did a ballpark energy estimate for a normal seine haul in average weather. We'd deplete an extended range tesla for every set, can't even imagine for the bigger boats moving real weight.