The Slow Pace of Change

Until I moved over the water I worked for a cutting edge residential construction company. We always installed the latest greatest tech, regardless of the cost (nice clients to have), and we had on staff some highly specialized (and impressively intelligent) engineers. So naturally when Greater Vancouver Regional District went all in on ecotech, they consulted with us as to how many electric cars the city's grid could sustain. It was a bit of a shock to learn that the answer was "not many more". The grid just can't move that much power around, and upgrading it to the point that it could would financially ruin the city, and be an ecological disaster. That much copper and aluminum isn't made of unicorn farts. I mean, the GRVD could buy the metals on the market, but then no one else around here could. Massively expanding mining to go after poor quality reserves would cause ghastly environmental damage, including huge increases in energy consumption. Worldwide fossil fuels are still in the majority, so to electrify in the future would require vast damage for a few decades. Irreversible damage.

I live in the GVRD myself, and we've always been smug about our hydroelectric power. Except with climate change we aren't getting enough rain or snow to provide hydro power year round anymore, so now we import power from out of province, or out of country. Places where it's coal or natural gas, so now our smug EV drivers cause more greenhouse emissions than gasoline powered drivers. Switching from coal to methane has not been an improvement. Methane is so much worse a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide that you have to lose less than 4% during production and distribution to cause less climate change than burning coal. Best current estimates are that we lose about 9%. So the fossil fuel that pushed as "Natural Gas" is more than twice as bad in its current state as coal. But German politicians do everything they can to have methane count as green at summits etc, while squealing like pigs when the French ask that nuclear power, which actually is be counted as well.

And the city won't let you upgrade your electrical connection to allow an EV without paying for the grid study as part of the (already hideously expensive) permitting process. If too many of your neighbors already drive a Tesla, they simply say No.

I like the electric ferry in Germany, but it's simply dishonest to pretend that's anything other than a boutique operation. Grid not a problem: it's in a big German city near the center. It's energy demand is small. And Germans are prepared to spend an absolute river of money to increase their per capita greenhouse emissions. Their emissions are three times those of France. Because Germany wants to virtue signal, while France wants to actually solve problems.

Consider the power to the dock or marina or wherever folks keep their boats. I've seen very few that could plug in a couple Teslas. And none whatsoever that could plug in all of them. Even if playing Russian roulette that many times with stray current eating aluminum boats, and EV battery packs spontaneously combusting and taking out all the boats and the marina too. Insurers would stop covering boats the day after the big fire.

I'm not denying the problem. Climate change causes me big problems now. We run out of water the last weeks each summer. Last year it was six weeks of sponge baths, and flushing the toilet with seawater. And my toilet is 100m from the water's edge. What I'm driving at is that almost everything we do makes the problem worse not better, and I'd like that to stop. We, as a planet would literally (I know what the word means. I'm using it correctly) literally be better off if we'd done nothing. Some things we've done have helped. Most have made it worse.

Anyway, now I'm cranky. But enthusiastically wrecking my planet does that to me.

 

This is the real bugbear. You need a dedicated substation to charge at those levels. You simply have to exchange the charge along with the passengers. Tanks of flow battery fluid, lorry loads of batteries you just drive on and plug in, or ISO containers that are batteries and toilets and concessions, that get swapped out each leg. Those can be customized for the route or season. Lots of ferries have a summer gig and a winter gig, and have to commute between the two areas. An ISO container with a big diesel genset and fuel tank can facilitate the move, then back to the batteries-and-toilets version at the new location.

Self-contained flow battery modules in a custom ISO container that is connected electrically to the ship is a workable and reasonably safe way to handle swappable power. They can be transported to a nearby yard for servicing and recharging with fluids (which are rather nasty to work with). It beats using old F4 hardpoints and converted munitions loaders to swap ten tons of batteries in ten minutes. Although the old ekranoplan look would be cool.

Of course, you're going to burn more diesel shifting the batteries around than you would if you just ran diesel primary propulsion in the boat. If you replaced 1000 gallons per day of diesel with flow batteries, you'd need to replace 100,000 gallons of electrolyte each day (call it 12 weight-maxxed tractor trailer tank trucks.) Then you have to transport that somewhere for recharging. That gives you roughly 7 miles one way until you burn 1000 gallons in the trucks. We are still staring down that 100:1 energy density cliff. (Actually, it would be a bit less than 100,000 gallons of electrolyte because the e-meter to prop shaft efficiency is a little higher than the fuel dock to prop shaft efficiency based on the standard way of looking at energy densities. But onboard diesel tanks have a 20% advantage over onboard fast charge batteries, so the efficiency difference is a lot less than people assume.)

One more somewhat interesting calculation. The bog standard fuel transfer pump that is used to refuel sport fish and bigger yachts pumps about 30 gallons per minute. To move an equivalent power with electricity, and accounting for better efficiency, you'd need about a 60 MW connection. I don't know what a 60 MW shore cord looks like, but I know I don't want one. Substations cost around $25,000 per MW, so about 1.5 million USD, plus assembly, for the substation, plus the shore connection to the ship. A 30 gpm diesel transfer pump costs about $4000.

 

I think that here in the so-called 'electric revolution' there are a lot of things tangled up in a skein:

(1a) The unstoppable climate change, which is a question of cosmic size, on the one hand, and on the other hand, (1b) the idea that we could stop it, as if with a great effort in these cosmic size tasks we could make the sun rise from the West.

(2) The cheapest sources of electricity are currently renewable sources if (a) there is sun or wind (b) if there is space and (c) if the developer has access to financing thanks to good credit quality.

(3) The Cambrian explosion (2035-) of storage systems: (a) a huge pile of different types of batteries that are just now being born (b) pumping water (c) compressing air or CO2 (d) heating rocks (e) producing hydrogen or ammonia

(4) The small vehicle engine

(5) Truck, tractor and ship engines

I think there are 5-6 different issues that tend to get very tangled up

 

Several of the concept designs we've seen or worked on are going with this battery technology
Shift - Clean Energy Storage SOLUTIONS that save money from day one https://shift-cleanenergy.com/

 

Give it time.
"Necessity is the mother of invention."
We'll figure it out eventually... or not.

 

I think many people have a lack of perspective here on propulsion methods.
Swimming ... 10,000+ years.
Poleing.... 5000+ years
Paddles....5000+ years
Oars...4000+ years
Sails....4000+ years
Steam....210 years
Naphtha .... 140 years
Electric.... 130 years
Diesel.... 120 years
Gasoline...110 years
Nuclear .... 70 years

All high energy density propulsion solutions are "new".

 

That's an interesting perspective @jehardiman . With electric being older than gasoline or diesel, presumably it is a comparably mature field where only tiny incremental improvements are still possible.

 

Hydrogen Combustion Engine

I bring this as an example that "Electrification" has many branches and one of them curiously is to produce Hydrogen.

Until recently it was thought to use Hydrogen in a 'fuel cell' to power an Electric motor, but it is a very expensive solution. Now it seems that they have returned to the original idea of replacing diesel with hydrogen.

Anyway, "the future in constant motion is" said master Yoda, and it is difficult to know how this whole exciting question of the "Electric Revolution" will evolve.

 

Recently in about four years we have seen the Price of LiFePO4 Batteries drop by 50% (!) in Price ...

... and this has happened when in the last fifteen years we have seen Prices going up +100% in an undercurrent of inflation, in fact Sailboats (I mean a well made Sailboat) in Europe have gone from 30k Euro per Ton to 60K per Ton.

I mean in the not too distant future the Price of Diesel and the Price of Hydrogen could cross.

 

As for the screens i think we have reached 'paradise on earth': for about 150 Euros we have a screen (Mobile Phone, that the screens now finally have sufficient brightness) that receives the signal from 4 Satellite Constellations: GPS, Glonass, Galileo, BeiDou (UrsaMajor) and we have Cartography for example C-Map among others.

C-MAP: Nautical charts https://appchart.c-map.com/core/map

 

2006

-I see a small light
-it looks like a yacht

(...)

For me this is a big change, because now (2024) we finally have lights that reach far and have low power consumption.

And also the AIS.

LED Lights + AIS.

Big change in the last few years.

 

Satellite Communicator ...

https://www.ybtracking.com/

... to send small text messages to the Admiralty:

-"Honey, don't change the lock on the door, I'll be right back".

 

A cordial greeting to all in this beautiful planet and painful world.

 

My old boat could top off around a thousand gallon of diesel, more than most boats it's size that usually packed 4-500 gallons. Because of the weight of fish and gear that's about all I ran around with. Thinking back to the places that could take me and the weather and tide it endured. Going to be a while before something beats that.

I'm just old enough for to remember talking about fishing with pre war engines, how hard they were to use and how little power they produced... and yet how much better they had been then the sail schooners. For those of us still working the water in necessary marine trades with thin margins, it's gonna be a while till we give that up.

 

Whatever direction this transition takes, it's going to need a change of mindset.
For some, that is going to be very challenging, perhaps impossible.
Which brings up the antage: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem".
I'm confident it'll all work out.