Elon Musk's New System -- Good for Boats?

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by jwcolby54

I hear ya. But it is an incontrovertible FACT that before there were diesel engines we didn't have diesel engines. People sailed. As someone put it, they sailed right up to the dock. They sailed away from the dock. If there was no wind then they didn't go anywhere. They learned when and where there would be wind, and they used that to plan their trips. And sometimes they sat in the middle of the ocean at a standstill because in the end, (as is being discussed on another thread) sometimes we don't get to pick our weather.

True, there were people who cruised prior to diesel engines but outside the uber rich who had professional crews, they were exceedingly few and far between.

Reliable diesel engines have made cruising a viable pastime.

Even among vast majority of full time cruisers the ability to motor for an hour at 75% of hull speed once every few days, is not a viable system. If you are talking about part time cruisers, very few have the ability to wait out the wind if they need to get home to make it to work the next day. They need a reliable drive system that can run for several hours continously.

For those rare individuals who are willing to wait it out and sail, they are probably already using less than 10gal/yr, so the benefits are negligible eliminating the diesel.

Other than selling eco street cred, there is no buisness case for electric drives given the current limitations.

[nimblemotors]

SolarPlanet is a Megayacht, what it costs must be compared to another diesel powered Megayacht.

Sun21 crossed the Atlantic on only solar power and electric power.

Why do you have sails on your boat when obviously they don't work since you need a diesel engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CctU8ndcKZc

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

"SolarPlanet is going around the world on all solar powered electric propulsion."

Yes she is ! With 5,511 sq feet of solar panels.

My 40' x 15' foot slip is 600 square feet so the panels on Planet Solar cover the area of over 9 (NINE) normal sized slips. How can anyone think that is practical?

That area of solar panels is roughly 265 300-watt panels which cost, for you or me, $300 / panel when purchased 20 at a time. The panels on Planet Solar therefore cost about $79,000.

The batteries weight 17,000 pounds. Practical?

The batteries can power the boat, at an average power consumption of 20 Kw per hour for 72-hours "of total darkness" so there must be about 1,440 KwH of storage. That would be 144 of the new Tesla wall batteries for a retail price of about $504,000.

There are two 60Kw motors, each of which weigh 200 pounds and cost about $10,000 dollars.

So the propulsion system, ignoring the cost of controllers, cables, inverters, costs about $593,000 and does the work of two Yanmar 4-cylinder turbocharged engines that cost about $20,000 apiece.

The average power requirement, when underway for Planet Solar is 17 Kw or 22 HP at the prop. A Yanmar 4JH3TE makes 12 HP at 2100 RPM and burns .9 GPH or 1.8 GPH for two engines.

The boat moves at 5-knots average and would need about 5,000 hours to make a 25,000 NM circumnavigation while burning 8,000 gallons. A circumnavigation, in a boat with two 80 HP diesels, would burn about 8,000 gallons of diesel at a cost of $40,000.

The same boat with direct drive diesel could circumnavigate 10 times and still have spent a $100k less than it cost to just outfit Planet Solar.

SURE - solar electric can be done but where do you dock a boat that has 5,500 square feet of solar panels?

The thing that really pisses me off is the Planet Solar claim of 0 emissions.

How much energy did it take to build 300 solar panels and 1.4 MW of batteries? Where will they dispose of those highly toxic batteries when they are worn out? What do you do with 5,500 square feet of solar panel when the boat is retired?

I am in the process of designing an off the grid solar system for a house and do love the technology but a little honesty in advertising is needed.

[hubertstephen]

What about as a house bank for a liveaboard? Would that be viable?

[med]

I am pretty sure that in the future cars, yachts and ships will all be electrically powered.

With electricity generated by a fuel cell from hydrogen.

A capacitor bank or possibly a battery will be used as a buffer - but not for providing a serious amount of continuous power. Todays battery technology is perfectly adequate for that use.

Hydrogen will eventually replace fossil fuels - it is a by product of many chemical processes, it can be produced by bacteria. It can be created from diesel fuel, methanol etc.

I think Elon Musk is chasing the wrong objective - the future is not about battery technology, but about fuel cells, and the production (by different means including excess free electricity), distribution and storage of hydrogen.

[Aargau]

Originally Posted by med

I think Elon Musk is chasing the wrong objective - the future is not about battery technology, but about fuel cells, and the production (by different means including excess free electricity), distribution and storage of hydrogen.

I don't understand your thinking on this. Is it for the range? Because it's a far less efficient system otherwise.

95% of all hydrogen generation is from methane, so you're not saving the release of byproducts from burning fossil fuels.

2006 Scientific American has a good analysis of the hydrogen energy pathway from creation, transportation to use, and says this:

"The entire process of electrolysis, transportation, pumping and fuel-cell conversion would leave only about 20 to 25 percent of the original zero-carbon electricity to drive the motor.” But in an EV or plug-in hybrid, “the process of electricity transmission, charging an onboard battery and discharging the battery would leave 75 to 80 percent of the original electricity to drive the motor.” So the hydrogen car is more like one third as efficient as the EV."


http://www.calcars.org/sci-am-romm-frank-apr06.pdf


From Elon Musk on why they're not pursuing hydrogen technology:

"Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism. It is not a source of energy. So you have to get that hydrogen from somewhere. if you get that hydrogen from water, so you’re splitting H20, electrolysis is extremely inefficient as an energy process…. if you say took a solar panel and use the energy from that to just charge a battery pack directly, compared to try to split water, take the hydrogen, dump the oxygen, compress the hydrogen to an extremely high pressure (or liquefy it) and then put it in a car and run a fuel-cell, it is about half the efficiency, it’s terrible. Why would you do that? It makes no sense."

[socaldmax]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"Whatever happened to the idea of swapping out
a discharged battery for a charged one?"
Supposedly the Tesla battery packs are designed to be hot-swapped, but that has not been implemented yet because of the extra complications. You'd need to have "swap stations" with staff and inventory, not just charging posts. And then there's another problem: I've got a new Tesla with a new battery. You swap in a battery from a 2013 Tesla. Hey, I don't want that, I came in with a NEW battery, at some point, how will I get stuck with an old dying battery instead of the one I just bought?
Kinda like the propane bbq tank swaps, except you're not arguing about a $100 tank, it's a $25,000 "tank".


Tesla and the Nooze apparently are both complicating issues because there are two very different Tesla home units proposed. The wall pack will just be a wall pack, about 3kwh for around $3500 "to the trade" not the end user. Then there will be a "home" pack around 10kwh at $25,000, which includes an AC inverter all whatever else is needed to make it your "mains" voltage for the entire home, even off the grid long term. The home unit will have thermal management (heat and cool) built in, the wall unit....damfino. Given the fine attention to scientific and technical points in The Nooze these days, I'm surprised they haven't announced Musk is going to use hyperloops to send Teslas to Mars.

Don't know how or where you got your info from, but the 7KW wall unit will be $3,000 and the 10KW wall unit will be $3,500. Considerably less than $24,000.

[med]

Originally Posted by socaldmax

Don't know how or where you got your info from, but the 7KW wall unit will be $3,000 and the 10KW wall unit will be $3,500. Considerably less than $24,000.

A Tesla car battery is 75KW or so. I suspect it will cost a bit more than the $3,500 of a 10KW unit.

[med]

Originally Posted by From Elon Musk on why they're not pursuing hydrogen technology

"Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism. It is not a source of energy. So you have to get that hydrogen from somewhere. if you get that hydrogen from water, so you’re splitting H20, electrolysis is extremely inefficient as an energy process…. if you say took a solar panel and use the energy from that to just charge a battery pack directly, compared to try to split water, take the hydrogen, dump the oxygen, compress the hydrogen to an extremely high pressure (or liquefy it) and then put it in a car and run a fuel-cell, it is about half the efficiency, it’s terrible. Why would you do that? It makes no sense."

Hydrogen is stored energy - not so much an energy storage mechanism.

Hydrogen you get from many sources as a by product. Using electricty to make hydrogen is inefficient. You would only do that if you had loads of excess electricty and you had nothing better to use it for (e.g. pumping water up hill for hydroelectric storage facilities, heating a resevoir of water for district heating during night time etc). Making hydrogen from excess electricity from wind turbines or solar panels just may make sense, however the majority will come from elsewhere such as natural gas and the bacterial decomposition/production as well.

We may well see natural gas as the predominant means of fuel delivery well before we have a hydrogen distribution network.

Natural gas can be used to easily make hydrogen for fuel cells, or can be used in conventional internal combustion engines. Probably the majority of city busses being put into service today run on natural gas.

Fuel Cells for Greener Shipping

[socaldmax]

Originally Posted by med

A Tesla car battery is 75KW or so. I suspect it will cost a bit more than the $3,500 of a 10KW unit.

That's not what he was talking about.

Tesla and the Nooze apparently are both complicating issues because there are two very different Tesla home units proposed. The wall pack will just be a wall pack, about 3kwh for around $3500 "to the trade" not the end user. Then there will be a "home" pack around 10kwh at $25,000, which includes an AC inverter all whatever else is needed to make it your "mains" voltage for the entire home, even off the grid long term. The home unit will have thermal management (heat and cool) built in, the wall unit....damfino. Given the fine attention to scientific and technical points in The Nooze these days, I'm surprised they haven't announced Musk is going to use hyperloops to send Teslas to Mars.

Sure looks like he posted the 10KW home pack is $25,000.

Or did I read that wrong?

I believe the correct numbers are: 7KW wall pack for $3,000, 10KW wall pack for $3,500. I haven't seen any published numbers for the car batteries.

[brantleychuck]

From today's WSJ " 7KW wall pack sells for 7k installed and must be combined with a solar panel lease or buy."


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[hellosailor]

Wasn't the WSJ journal quoting a woman who said she didn't know what the fuss was all about, because grant money paid $20-25k for her SYSTEM including a 7kw battery pack and that was all before Musk had anything to say or offer?


A little more than the battery price involved.

[brantleychuck]

The $7,000 figure in the WSJ article was attributed to Peter Rive, CTO Solar City, a cousin of Mr Musk


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