Triskel power generation system on Distant Shores III

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by OceanPlanet

FWIW, the Integrel uses either CANbus data from the engine, or a programmed rpm/load curve, to regulate the charging load so as to not overload the engine.

You have to think about what your saying to see it makes no sense.
First your pulling significant power and not burning fuel to do so, you have invented the perpetual motion machine, you can’t pull 10 to 15 hp off of an engine and not burn fuel, and to say you can is insulting to people that know better. So your statement that fuel burn increases only .1 or .2 GPH further shows your not pulling much power.
That 10 to 15 HP is based on a 4 to 5 KW guess.
My Nexgen 3.5 burns on average .25 an hour and max it’s capable of burning is .5 an hour. Fuel burn of one quart an hour is irrelevant in my planning and reducing it to a half quart a hour is really insignificant.

Want to save fuel? Put an Autoprop on the boat and slow down

By the way, what does this system cost anyway?

Then your statement about monitoring the engine and backing off the power you pull from it to ensure it’s not overloaded, is a fancy way of saying you don’t pull enough power to amount to much.

People have promised free lunches for ever, and there isn’t one, you can’t pull power from a Diesel and not burn fuel, and you can’t significantly increase the power pulled from a properly propped engine without overloading it, so to pull power you have to decrease the drive load, so do you have a transmission that slows the prop or do you have a pitch adjustable prop?

Dockhead you run your motor now 300 hours a year, but if you go full time and if you run the propulsion engine as a generator you’ll likely run 1,000 hours a year

Of course yards R&R engines, that’s the most profit, of an engine rusts as it ages, then it wasn’t cared for.
This is a 1987 engine, that makes it 32 yrs old, it has some light rust and this week it will be washed and rust stopped and spot painted and then corrosion-x reapplied. There is no reason ever for an engine to be allowed to rust.

[OceanPlanet]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

You have to think about what your saying to see it makes no sense.
First your pulling significant power and not burning fuel to do so, you have invented the perpetual motion machine, you can’t pull 10 to 15 hp off of an engine and not burn fuel, and to say you can is insulting to people that know better. So your statement that fuel burn increases only .1 or .2 GPH further shows your not pulling much power.
That 10 to 15 HP is based on a 4 to 5 KW guess.
My Nexgen 3.5 burns on average .25 an hour and max it’s capable of burning is .5 an hour. Fuel burn of one quart an hour is irrelevant in my planning and reducing it to a half quart a hour is really insignificant.

Want to save fuel? Put an Autoprop on the boat and slow down

By the way, what does this system cost anyway?

Then your statement about monitoring the engine and backing off the power you pull from it to ensure it’s not overloaded, is a fancy way of saying you don’t pull enough power to amount to much.

People have promised free lunches for ever, and there isn’t one, you can’t pull power from a Diesel and not burn fuel, and you can’t significantly increase the power pulled from a properly propped engine without overloading it, so to pull power you have to decrease the drive load, so do you have a transmission that slows the prop or do you have a pitch adjustable prop?

Attachment 202409

I'll let Nigel Calder, TML, and Parker-Hannefin all know that they've been wasting their time and to contact you for clarification.

Seriously though, of course no energy is free. However due to the fact that most props are sized small enough for the engine to reach full rpm/power, there is a fair bit of headroom to fill when the boat is motoring at lower speeds. Yes, of course it takes more fuel than without the charging load added, but not as much as it would take if using the engine for charging only. Nigel's video goes into detail on this, and he has many years of studying fuel use vs loads on both engines and AC generators.

[a64pilot]

They have a product to sell, and yes there is some “fudge” or headroom with any properly designed product due to manufacturing variations and other concerns, it’s not possible to determine the absolute limit so you back off some and that’s considered the fudge, plus thicker layers of fudge tend to make a powerplant last much longer and make for happier customers, look at what derating a motor does for its longevity to see what I mean, but your doing the opposite, so what do you think will happen?

However I can say for certainty that if you start delving into that fudge you will shorten the life of an engine.
Many aircraft turbine engines are the identical engine with different limitations. The engines with higher limits come with shorter TBO’s, because being run harder shortens its life, there is no free lunch.

It’s really very simple, you load an engine to a higher level and you will shorten its life, and you will burn more fuel.
There is a reason why a manufacturer doesn’t spec a higher pitch prop and have their boat go faster at lower engine RPM and lower noise and vibration, it’s because that added load is bad on the engine. It doesn’t matter what the cause of the load is, a hydraulic pump, or a generator, or a higher pitched prop.
If you add a significant load one way, you have to decrease it from another to keep the engine at its proper load. It’s why a car downshifts when pulling a hill.

Average cruising sail boat has on average about a 40 ish HP motor, that develops on average about 20 HP at low cruise. Now you throw another 10 or 15 HP load on top of the 20 it’s making and cause it to make 30 or more HP at the same RPM it’s overloaded, seriously so.

So you turn down the HP draw to a point that the engine isn’t overloaded, and just curious what means is used to determine that? Do you install a torque meter or a pyrometer?
However it’s done you turn down the power to a point to where it’s safe, and now your drawing about as much power as a big alternator can, just I’m sure a very expensive alternator.

Now if you have a big power boat with 300 HP or larger engines, then you can probably extract another 10 to 15 HP from the engine with no problem.

If you have a smaller motor you will have to decrease prop pitch to return the load to an acceptable amount, which will of course have you motoring at a much slower speed or much higher RPM.

Now if you know that your engine has been derated, then you can add more load to it, up to the point where it matches the higher rating.
However that isn’t I don’t believe a common thing.

[john61ct]

But shortening the life of the engine is not a concern for 99.99% of owners out there.

They get replaced decades before the point they would have lasted if cared for properly, remaining reliable, parts easily available etc.

[john61ct]

And of course an owner putting in this system would match it to a suitable engine / prop setup in order to get value for all that money.

Fair enough to say "I would never want one" but IMO silly to claim its being effective is flat out impossible without wating for field reports from trustworthy sources.

Just the fact that someone like Nigel has devoted years in his old age to its development, means to me at least the theory and intention of the project must be sound, even if the implementation only serves a small niche.

[john61ct]

I also think your HP per kW is a bit high, even incremental improvements in IRL efficiency could get that down to say near 2.

In fact I've seen reports from people I trust that you can get close to 6kW from a 12HP engine, and that's likely based on much older tech.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by john61ct

But shortening the life of the engine is not a concern for 99.99% of owners out there.

They get replaced decades before the point they would have lasted if cared for properly, remaining reliable, parts easily available etc.

Probably true for the person that only want a new boat and will either get out boating in a few years or buy another new boat.
But that isn’t the average cruiser I run into. The average cruiser I run into is on a budget, is likely Retired and on a fixed income, and has a tendency to watch the budget, anchor out as opposed to Marina hop etc.
They also on average are in older boats that they bought used, and a few have engines that are close to being run out. Only ones I have met that weren’t working hard to make their engine last were the ones that didn’t know squat about engines, and that often bites them pretty hard, most have difficultly in dropping 30 grand or so to repower, or even say half that to overhaul.

A cruiser often wears out an engine, that’s because they are cruising often 365 days a year. It’s the people that keep a boat in a marina and work that don’t wear out engines and due to them working they are part time cruisers at best.

Now I will buy into that the average motor that gets replaced it’s due to age and poor upkeep, but actual full time cruisers, that cruise for years are actually pretty rare.
So for the guy who works during the week and takes the boat out occasionally on weekends, for him using the propulsion motor as a generator is probably logical.
Just know that to actually pull significant power from the average cruising sailboat, you need to not be motoring, and I’d bet that if that is what you want to do that you can do that with a couple of Military alternators or similar for a whole lot less money.

They only way you can measure the load on an engine is with a torque meter, and I know of none of them fitted on boat motors, you can infer load from a pyrometer, but any other way is a guess, like fuel flow vs RPM should give you a pretty good guess

[john61ct]

It is most certain this product is not intended for the average boater. I doubt more than 2% of even those that can afford it would be candidates for it. Nor even that it is suitable for cruisers, whatever limitations that may imply.

I inferred from your comments that you are claiming the idea **can't** be made to work.

We do not yet have enough information to know what the suitability factors are, but I doubt it violates the laws of physics. . .

[john61ct]

Obviously the critical bit is the technical details as to how electricity output is varied to inversely match propulsion HP, and that is the key innovation here.

Of course there will be much cheaper ways to get a rough approximation of the same result, but some percentage of the market wants a professionally installed warranteed "solution" rather than DIY kludge workarounds.

[john61ct]

In many common use cases, there is no need to produce electricity from more than 5-10% of the engine's power.

And if you're getting near the end of a motoring session, and simply slowing down your speed for the 15min finishes filling up your 800Ah LFP bank, to me that would be darn convenient.

[a64pilot]

If you only need 5 to 10% then that is an alternator
Your not understanding, you can’t slow down to free up more power for the generator, slowing down drops RPM which decreases available HP.
Why you need to do is either slow the prop leaving engine RPM the same or decrease pitch in the prop, or run around underpropped all the time.

Now if you look at a graph of how much power an engine makes vs RPM you’ll see it’s often an arc, not a straight line with the middle range being higher than the ends.
Then look at the power a prop absorbs vs RPM and you’ll see it’s often also an arc, but it’s the opposite of the power arc, so there is room if you will that on paper allows for some more power to be pulled from the engine without overloading it, in the middle RPM range where most of us cruise.
Average engine a high power alternator fills the difference well, above that and you need to reduce power to the prop as the power to the generator is increased.
Of course one way is to put the motor into neutral, very likely one of these devices provides enough load with an engine at high idle at anchor so the engine is loaded nicely and not underloaded like many engine are that are used to charge batteries.

It’s not an unsolvable problem, you just need a way to vary propellor shaft load so that as the generator takes more power, less is given to the prop.
But it’s not an easy or cheap solution, either a two speed transmission or a variable pitch prop. I’d rather have the prop myself.

Maybe one of those Gori props would work, don’t they have an “overdrive”? Prop it so overdrive is correct with no generator load and don’t run it in overdrive when your making power?
That might work?

[john61ct]

This **is** really "just" a big alt, putting out 48V, coupled with a much more sophisticated VR. Actual installation into a pre-existing or second-hand boat may well require tweaks to the engine / transmission / prop components.

Or maybe only going to be sold as part of purpose-designed new builds?

I'm not qualified to guess about their implementation details, nor do I care much, we'll know soon enough.

And that 5-10% I gave is just one example, for when most power is needed for propulsion.

As I understand it, the key innovation is the ability to scale amps production up, say in calm water, or when propulsion speed is not important, and back down when things change.

With current alternator VRs, we don't have the ability to do this so dynamically, de-rating or increasing current rate output is not a convenient adjustment, certainly not done "live" during a given motoring run.

My main point here is taking issue with (my inference of) you saying the whole project is useless or even impossible.

[a64pilot]

John, your not understanding.
I’ll try another way, see the propeller is matched to the engine so that the props absorbs all available power the engine makes.
Think an automobile that is always on a flat highway, one gear would suffice, want to speed up, increase engine RPM, slow dow? Decrease engine RPM, but the speed vs RPM is fixed and HP is fixed to RPM too.

Now decide to significantly increase the load, like say pull a trailer. You can’t do that, you’ll overload the engine unless you can select a lower gear.

Now a boat prop is a single fixed gear, if you add a load to the engine, you need to downshift or you will overload the engine.
Now like I said if the engine is sufficiently large adding a 10 or 20 HP load isn’t significant, about like having the airconditioner kick on in your car.

However if your engine is 100 HP or less, then 10 or 20 HP is significant, and if it’s only 40 or 50, it’s real significant.

Slowing down doesn’t work because you do so by dropping RPM and smooth water doesn’t free up any excess HP because when a boat is going into waves and or high winds, it slows down of course but the engine RPM changes little due to prop slippage.

I think the Gori prop may work as it is in effect a lower gear that you could select when using the generator and the kick it back into overdrive when your not.
But I’ve never operated a Gori so I don’t know if the difference is enough or not

https://www.ab-marine.com/folding/gori/gori-3-blade/

[Cdn]

When I buy my new sailing yacht and if this package is available, I would purchase this system as long as it is 50% of the cost of a standalone genset. I will be on the move often and not staying in one anchorage for long, I want to run my AC off the batteries at night if it is warm and I want hot showers. I am willing to pay to have have a large lithium battery bank to do so. If I can recharge 1200amh of batteries (using the space where the genset would have been) in 1-1/2 hours of motoring or generating, bring it on.

Cheers,

N

[a64pilot]

Well your numbers are off a little, but yes what you want is possible.
A few corrections, first very often you can take the same space used by lead batteries and put in a rather large LFP bank, so you may not need or use the area normally taken by a generator.
Second to charge say 1000 AH in an hour would take at least a 12 KW generator so no I don’t think that’s possible especially if you first subtract house loads, but you might could do it in a couple of hours.

However the issue is pulling that kind of power may seriously overload your engine, you didn’t specify what you mean by Yacht, if it’s a larger power boat with a big motor, your in.

I hav enough clue as to cost, but bet it’s at least as much as a stand alone generator, but I’ve never even seen one so that is just a wild guess.

A link to data would be interesting.