The Slow Pace of Change

We all must just go back to a slower lifestyle, using less energy. The post WWII industries pumped out consumer goods instead of bombs, each year a new model would would be more attractive / powerful / sellable, driving consumerism. Buyers came to expect faster, easier, more powerful consumer goods, and now we are used to using so much more energy than say what was needed per person between the two world wars. Life went on successfully back then, and great things were invented and built and transported with much less powerful engines. These days people out shopping leave the car engine running and a/c on so the car doesn't warm up / cool down; pedestrian zombies looking at mobile phones risk their lives walking into cars; and houses with dozens of gadgets on standby use power to do nothing but wait, and maybe over heat and catch fire while you are out. So much power is wasted in signage and novelty light displays; and who really needs a home cinema, or a massively powerful car ?
Just saying we could make things much simpler for ourselves, and the planet, if we all just toned it down a bit; less globalisation consumerism = less energy use and pollution, less extinctions, less cultural loss, less false instant gratification from 'retail therapy', leading to less landfill garbage dumps.
Change must be from the people, because politicians and industrialists won't initiate change on their own unless they profit. There's enough fossil fuels to go another hundred years, so the rate of change will be slow, unless we kick some bottoms along down the road of change. 2 cents.

 

But

But we have no power either in economic forces or in the 'gods' or 'spirits' or in more modern parlance 'mental software' or 'collective delusions' of our lords and masters. We are mere bystanders, so better get excited about the LiFePO4 Batteries.

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Talking among ourselves about 'gods' or 'big topics' in 'the West' is an archaism of 60-70 years ago. Today our topics are gardening, gastronomy, sports, gossip, sailboats and the like. Sixty years ago the plebs maybe had some power by a sum of circumstances, a brief hiatus to return to the central tendency: we are medieval peasants, let's accept our condition. We are left with an old custom of speaking in the 'assembly of free men', a pre-medieval or pre-roman or brief parenthesis after the second world war. It is better to talk about LiFePO4 batteries, imho.

 

Dutch harbor had a cargo ship hanging out with burning lithium batteries. While it took a while to make national news it's been something on our minds here.

A commercial boat was built semi hybrid (for it's hotel power not propulsion) and most of us were looking forward to seeing how it worked. Remember very vividly we were in when it came in for a fire in the battery compartment that kept flaring up. Eventually they pulled all that system off around year 3 and it's no longer hybrid. Despite some exceptional money spent it didn't perform. Was a lot of speculation as to the quality of the design, most figured the vibration and impact of gear were much higher than expected by the design team.

I'm typing this from the wheel house of one of the newer vessels in the fleet. It was built with a tier 4 hotel power generator, it burned out at a little over 5000 hrs. The boat in the stall adjacent had a similar set go a little over 8400 before it threw a rod. Considering many of the generators installed in the late 90s and early 2000s usually got top end work done in the 20k hr range and similar tier one units like the one in my old boat were still rolling in the 30k hr range.... it's a backward step in reliability.

Not a real shock, turbo engines with dry manifolds hold a lot more heat in a confined space. So while they hit emission targets, they become unreliable when compared to their predecessors. As such a cottage industry had sprung up digging up old equipment and rebuilding it. Instead of the fleet embracing cleaner diesel it's going the opposite direction.

It's not for a lack of wanting cleaner equipment, we spend our lives on the water and the renewable resources of fish have kept us employed for generations (I'm third and we're working on generation 4 now on the boats). We're more invested than any other group in sustainability, but the solutions need to function.

Nobody was against the switch to tier 2, swapping out that leaky old noisy Detroit for a john deere that didn't need a bale of absorbent rags underneath was awesome. It was quiet, idled much more efficiently and we liked it. No incentives needed to get us to adopt it, as the tiers progressed sadly that's reversed.

The tech needs to work, it needs to not put the adopter in more risk than previous equipment. Pushing tech not ready to do that gets pushback that actually hinders progress.

 

I’d say the pace of change has been pretty frisky, but in the direction of exploring where more power gets you.

How long have 4-5 200 hp outboards on one transom been normal? With a dedicated gas trolling motor of course-

Fairly heavy sailboats that will plane with insane amounts of sail?

Sound systems that require insane amounts of power?

500- 900 hp gas cars?

I was looking at comments on the Apterra ( up to 1000 miles on a charge with some sunshine, etc, fair amount of room for two, etc), and the most powerful argument ( other than will it actually be mass market) was that if you got hit by an F250 or a Silverado while driving an Apterra you would die.

Although super capacitors combined with LiFePo batteries and prop regen might be a step forward- every time we dock, in or out, it’s a little sinus clearing to see what the battery range does on our Torqeedo 48-5000 readout. Same for accelerating. This argues for an electric outboard that can be pulled out of the water, so a turbine regen type prop (and its drag) can be used instead of a folding prop when sailing. But that would look like crap on Amati, so we went saildrive, and folding prop even though we would have regen capability with a turbine prop. First world problems. But if somebody would come up with a folding prop that could be set in and out of regen mode….. (I know, we could have installed a retractable inboard prop system, but has anybody done a refit these day$?

Anyway, using current and even a bit wind downwind with electric and sails, we can usually get >6 hours at 6 knots, which is a step in the right direction. Roll up solar panels are in the future, and maybe use our Torqeedo outboard as regen, since it’s light and easy to set up / put away. It’s sailing, but more so- it’s sailing all the time. Who would put up with that? But when we see large motorboats idling along at non planing speeds because they are tired of >$1500 fill ups for a weekend, change is coming. I had an interesting conversation with a guy with a 40’ Bayliner about what it would cost him to add a stern something to his boat that would get him reasonable speed without the gas consumption that was keeping him at the dock.

edit- I should also mention the $afety requirements our insurance company demanded because of the epower onboard.

another edit- I should have also mentioned the cult/philosophy of speed, which arose around 1900 +-. Hard to tell if that’s found it’s shelf life….

 

"Dutch harbor had a cargo ship hanging out with burning lithium batteries."

But ...

"NMC" or "LFP" ("LiFePO4")

A "mammal" can be a "mouse" or an "elephant". Again and again the expression "lithium battery" appears, which means nothing, no information but noise.

NMC

Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_nickel_manganese_cobalt_oxides

LFP

Lithium iron phosphate battery - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery

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NMC

 

One huge trouble with the tier four stuff is with gaming the hp steps. The new mowers replacing the old 68 hp machines that ran for 10,000 hours have 24.9 hp engines, and gee, they don't last as long. But the cutting units are the same, they have just used electronics to take away nearly all operator control over the machine, and they mostly cut like garbage too because you can't work the machine as an operator. Sometimes I need that extra 33 horse power. Mostly I don't and can get 15-20 years out of an engine. And we are talking $80 grand for these things - it'd be nice to be able to pay it off and still have something for a couple years. So yeah, I'm keeping an eye out for older engines. Ten years ago, I had five old Kubota's that I couldn't give away, so they went to the scrap yard. Couldn't find one now. I'm typing this from my shop at work, where I'm tinkering on my '99 Tahoe, which is the newest of my vehicles. The problem with being a decent mechanic on the older stuff is the bodies fall apart before the engine.

I'm thinking triple grey

 

Inevitably the pioneers are the people that find the bugs.Maybe the people doing the marine conversions need to spend some time afloat or doing actual maintenance.I don't doubt that the original engines were developed to a very efficient level of performance in their original applications and it seems to need some additional development.
I have to agree that the sight of half a dozen giant outboards on a leisure boat is difficult to justify.A simpler,lighter boat might not be a huge sacrifice if the alternative is a transition to a rowing boat in a few decades.

 

It sounds a bit like a joke a spanish submarine that in immersion works with Alcohol, although perhaps the real joke would be an irish submarine that works with Alcohol.

S-80 Plus-class submarine - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-80_Plus-class_submarine

Joking aside we will see (2025/30-) a big change in the capabilities of diesel-electric Submarines by incorporating systems such as Alcohol-->Hydrogen for about 20 days of silent submerged patrol at 4 knots and full Batteries available in case we need to accelerate.

New batteries, whether LiFePO4 or Sodium, will have a major impact on future diesel-electric submarines.

 

Above we see the electric motor (3500 kW) and below we see three diesel generators (1200 kW each): the point is that with the new batteries not only the stored energy is greatly increased but also the charging time (snorkel time) is greatly reduced.

 

From the point of view of a minimalist light sailboat, what surprises me is the light weight of the new batteries.

In a lead-acid battery to get 40 Amps we need a battery of about 30 kg and about 100 Amps to discharge it by 40%.

And 40 Amps we can get it from a LiFePO4 Battery of 50 Amps discharging 80% and weighs about 5 kilos (!)

 

I briefly looked at using an electric outboard in my daily commuter. I was thinking 50hp is enough for the ten minute ride from home to the marina. A new 4 stroke weighs about 250#, 350 including fuel, rigging, battery. Costs about $8500.
The equivalent electric OB, at least according to the ad copy from the manufacturer, weighs about 1000#, and costs about $33000, not including the cost of modifying our dock for the charging setup.

The extra weight penalty is about the capacity of our current commuter, so once installed the boat can't actually carry people anymore. Taking the cost of electricity at zero, and our current fuel consumption and pump rates, it would take seven years to break even. What is the lifespan of the battery pack?

The laws of physics makes this an uphill battle.

 

“And in general the troll (politician) (salesman) says what is false but sounds like the truth—or rather he does not quite say it, but rather something very close to it which is true.”

 

Had a wild week. I'll probably do a separate thread on lessons learned as it appears to some design tweaks I'll think about going forward.

After last week, I'll continue to pursue reliability above all criteria. My corner of the ocean is unforgiving and does not respect any ethic no mater how noble. My pace of adoption just slowed even more.

 

.....let it out; you're in good company regarding order of priority.....

 

Season drug on for several days longer than expected. Putting guys lower in fuel than most like to go. Combine that with the weather service and various apps missing the mark by about 18 hrs and 10 knots made for some sketchy situations.

I'll use the less severe example as the sinking/rollover needs its own segment. Baffle gap might be too large on many of these boats as when it gets extremely rough and fuel levels get low engines can/will aspirate. Re priming can take a bit but is usually solvable by picking a zig zag tack with the sea state after a vigorous mechanical re prime. Almost all the higher tier motors are computer controlled, who threw codes that put engines in limp mode.... there were some angry guys on the dock the next day. Higher complexity and lower fuel burn at idle did little when the error code popped off and required them to idle in the dishwasher for hrs more.

Know of a boat about seven years ago that washed up on the rocks. The new engine had thrown a code and gone into limp mode that was unresolveable at sea. In its decreased state the wind and tide overcame its ability to keep off the beach and the boat was lost. Last week was a reminder that while they burn cleaner and with less fuel... I'd made it back to town with an old Jimmy puking so much oil we added a sump and a pump to get it home. But it got us home.