Inboard engines and a changing world

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Not an entirely accurate projection when specific to grid provided electricity

I cited the US, you cited the world. Bit of a difference there.

Finish your soup, dear.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I cited the US, you cited the world. Bit of a difference there.

Finish your soup, dear.

Future projections indicate a steady rise for the US. Your assessment appears to have been skewed by the effects of the GFC in recent past years.


https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38572

U.S. net electricity generation increased by 4% in 2018, reaching a record high of 4,178 million megawatthours (MWh), according to EIA’s Electric Power Monthly. Last year was the first time total utility-scale generation surpassed the pre-recession peak of 4,157 million MWh set in 2007. Weather is the primary driver of year-to-year fluctuations in electricity demand. The increased demand for electricity in 2018—including record demand in the commercial and residential sectors—is largely attributable to cold winters and a hot summer.

[Mike OReilly]

I thought we were talking about boats going electrical? Shifting the entire land-based energy infrastructure to electric is a far more complex and difficult question.

Given all I've read here, and the fairly extensive research I've done on the subject, I still say electric engines for boats like mine are not particularly viable. Not if we're talking about using my boat and my engine in a similar way that I currently do -- and lets just say I already prefer to sail vs motoring.

But I also prefer to remain off the dock for extended periods of time (many weeks, to multiple months). Given the realities of passive charging systems (solar, wind), and amp storage, I simply do not see electric propulsion as a reasonable alternative right now -- at least not for cruisers like me who stay off the dock and prefer remote areas.

That day may yet come, but in the words of Aragorn: IT IS NOT THIS DAY!

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

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Adelie

Comparisons to aircraft are poor. Aircraft engines a redesigned to minimize weight at the cost of more frequent maintenance. Also with a few exceptions they run gasoline not diesel.

No, a piston engine running just about the same RPM, is very much a good comparison, fuel type really doesn’t effect life limits.
Diesels often outlive gas motors because they run at lower RPM due to their fuel injection limitation and are more robustly built to deal with erratic ignition and higher compression.
You see the exact same shorter lives in auto conversions, which as their name indicates is an automobile engine used in an aircraft application. Small block Chevy in a Corvette will last probably 10 times as long as it does in an aircraft.

aircraft engines are designed to be as light as they can, but that in no way increases maintenance.
The wear is proportional to how hard they are run, nearly identical engines with different HP ratings lives closely follow those ratings. For example the Lycoming 540 is available in power outputs from 235 to 350 HP. The 235 lasts much longer than the higher HP ones.

Why do you think identical motors have different power ratings for commercial and recreational use?
The reason is that a much greater life is expected of the industrial motor.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Pete7

What I don't understand is why EV cars don't have a 400-600w of solar on the roof. Won't make much difference if the vehicle is used on a long journey, but for around town short trips were the car is parked up all day at work that would be free power topping up the battery system.



Pete

You don’t get much power as you might think.
Prius had a solar panel on its roof, good God everyone on the Internet was saying it would run the AC to keep the car cool while you were at work, and nothing would convince them it wouldn’t.
What it really did was run a little computer fan to exhaust hot air so it did work, but a little computer fan doesn’t pull many amps either.
I think it was discontinued, most people go out of their way to park their cars in the shade, garages etc, and of course you don’t get much Solar that way.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I was responding to the suggestion that home charging of EVs would stress the grid and home wiring.



I'm familiar with wiring to code, but the current code that I know doesn't take into account the times of use and other means of load management. As EVs become more common, the electrical codes will be revised to address this.

Think about this for a sec, so you shift work, and you can’t take a shower, cook or wash and dry your clothes because your neighbor is charging his car?
Or the timer fails or due to a power failure forgets what time is is or whatever and the building burns down?
You surely have to admit that with a high enough number of units, anything that can happen, will.

There are innumerable problems to overcome, doesn’t mean they won’t be, but it’s going to take time and bunches of money. You can’t just increase the electric demand by as much as it would take for everyone to charge their cars at night, that may be the off peak time, until tens of thousands of cars start charging, then peak and off peak times will shift.

If you think about it, it’s amazing that a gasoline car would be allowed to exist with as dangerous as gas is, to say nothing of the fact that millions of people sleep with the things in their house or underneath them in Apartments and millions of gasoline stations exist, with I’d guess billions of gallons of highly flammable and explosive fuel stored in them.

Yet over a very long time period it has come to pass, electric will come to pass too, but it’s not as simple as everyone plugging in their cars to the wall. The infrastructure doesn’t exist both small and large.

Someone posted an example of Siemens idea of using Hydrogen to run a generator to charge cars, and yes that sounds stupid, but it’s one way of getting it done until the infrastructure can be built.

[a64pilot]

Think about it, electric cars are a reality and they work, but only because they are tethered to a charge station, a Diesel boat is of course tied to the fuel dock, the difference is that you can carry enough fuel for a very large number of hours motoring, you can’t carry enough battery to motor for the same number of hours, not with present technology.
Maybe one day?

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Think about it, electric cars are a reality and they work, but only because they are tethered to a charge station, a Diesel boat is of course tied to the fuel dock, the difference is that you can carry enough fuel for a very large number of hours motoring, you can’t carry enough battery to motor for the same number of hours, not with present technology.
Maybe one day?

Much better summary than my last effort.

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Think about it, electric cars are a reality and they work, but only because they are tethered to a charge station, a Diesel boat is of course tied to the fuel dock, the difference is that you can carry enough fuel for a very large number of hours motoring, you can’t carry enough battery to motor for the same number of hours, not with present technology.
Maybe one day?

Ah, cutting to the chase, the simple truth. The end of the thread obviously.

[malbert73]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Think about it, electric cars are a reality and they work, but only because they are tethered to a charge station, a Diesel boat is of course tied to the fuel dock, the difference is that you can carry enough fuel for a very large number of hours motoring, you can’t carry enough battery to motor for the same number of hours, not with present technology.
Maybe one day?

Finally the easiest explanation to these circular threads. Can we all promise to reference this quote above next time a new thread starts to discuss electric powered long distance cruising yachts?

[mcarthur]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Think about it, electric cars are a reality and they work, but only because they are tethered to a charge station, a Diesel boat is of course tied to the fuel dock, the difference is that you can carry enough fuel for a very large number of hours motoring, you can’t carry enough battery to motor for the same number of hours, not with present
technology.

Hmm - here's some bald counter-statements:

Think about it, sailing boats have moved across oceans for millennia and they work (copying you ). Electric cars are NOT electric sailing boats - they do not have sails which permit locomotion in a non-fuel-dock way (ie. wind).
Long range electric cars are NOT long range electric motor yachts - they do not have solar generation giving "infinite" range (Silent yachts, Planetsolar).
Shorter range electric cars ARE like short range electric motor yachts tethered to a charge station.

So I agree that there is at least one scenario in line with your statements, but many that aren't.

Regarding the "long range", I'm generally ignoring speed here although there's some pretty funky production boats on the market now that can near-match the average cruising boat ("infinite" range - Silent 55 is quoting 4kn (100nm) per day for "weeks at a time on solar power alone"). Of course please ignore the difference in cost, but that wasn't in your statements ...

The long range statement is a bit more similar than I gave credit above (because I wanted to be biased ) in that the solar races like that World Solar Challenge do it using solar-only and are definitely long range: like many boating equivalents, they are essentially research-only vessels that have never gone into production. Contrast to something like Silent which you can buy and drive away (they're not Hyundai's, nor even Tesla's, but they are "in production"...)

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

Hmm - here's some bald counter-statements:

Think about it, sailing boats have moved across oceans for millennia and they work (copying you ). Electric cars are NOT electric sailing boats - they do not have sails which permit locomotion in a non-fuel-dock way (ie. wind).
Long range electric cars are NOT long range electric motor yachts - they do not have solar generation giving "infinite" range (Silent yachts, Planetsolar).
Shorter range electric cars ARE like short range electric motor yachts tethered to a charge station.

So I agree that there is at least one scenario in line with your statements, but many that aren't.

Regarding the "long range", I'm generally ignoring speed here although there's some pretty funky production boats on the market now that can near-match the average cruising boat ("infinite" range - Silent 55 is quoting 4kn (100nm) per day for "weeks at a time on solar power alone"). Of course please ignore the difference in cost, but that wasn't in your statements ...

The long range statement is a bit more similar than I gave credit above (because I wanted to be biased ) in that the solar races like that World Solar Challenge do it using solar-only and are definitely long range: like many boating equivalents, they are essentially research-only vessels that have never gone into production. Contrast to something like Silent which you can buy and drive away (they're not Hyundai's, nor even Tesla's, but they are "in production"...)

as far as the silent 55 I suppose you missed the part about the 100kw diesel genset.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by malbert73

Finally the easiest explanation to these circular threads. Can we all promise to reference this quote above next time a new thread starts to discuss electric powered long distance cruising yachts?

Except that wasn't what the thread was about even though it drifted there. Lol

The thread was about the very real situation boats will be in when fossil fuels are not really used for automotive transportation anymore. Like when they retired the horse from pulling the carriage. Horses are really expensive now. They are a tiny niche.

The same can happen to diesel.

I'm fitting out my boat to be prepared for that coming eventuality.

Based on the number of diesel shops and gas stations for sale I've seen, it's coming a lot faster than people on here are thinking.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Except that wasn't what the thread was about even though it drifted there. Lol

The thread was about the very real situation boats will be in when fossil fuels are not really used for automotive transportation anymore. Like when they retired the horse from pulling the carriage. Horses are really expensive now. They are a tiny niche.

The same can happen to diesel.

I'm fitting out my boat to be prepared for that coming eventuality.

Based on the number of diesel shops and gas stations for sale I've seen, it's coming a lot faster than people on here are thinking.

Trust me the diesel engine is not going anywhere . It will keep moving freight around the world. For at least the next century.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Except that wasn't what the thread was about even though it drifted there. Lol

The thread was about the very real situation boats will be in when fossil fuels are not really used for automotive transportation anymore. Like when they retired the horse from pulling the carriage. Horses are really expensive now. They are a tiny niche.

Actually...I think your horse analogy is a good example, except it doesn't support your assertion.

A little googling....Price of a riding horse in 1860 was around $75. Inflation adjusted that's around $2400.

Basic trail riding horse today is around $1000-4000.

Obviously, you can pull out specialty animals to play with the exact numbers and get some odd results but you can also take specialty cars and get odd results (ie: lambos costing upwards of half a million or race horses costing many thousands).

Gas vs Electric will likely be similar. EVs right now are limited to certain niches (though potentially large niches). For other niches, they are unlikely to be practical for many decades...if ever. Given that your average car today lasts 20yrs...If it's 20yrs before EVs make up 1/2 of sales...that means 40yrs before half of vehicles are EVs...that means in 40yrs there are still many millions of gas vehicles on the road.