When ships moved from muscle- and wind power to burning coal and other fossil fuels for their propulsion, they also became significantly faster and larger. Today’s cargo ships and ferries have become the backbone of modern civilization, along with a range of boat types. Even though tugs and smaller pleasure vessels are a far cry from a multi-thousand ton cargo or cruise ship, one would be hard-pressed to convert these boats back to a pure muscle or wind-based version. In short, we won’t be going back to the Age of Sail, but at the same time the fossil fuel-burning engines in these boats and ship come with their own range of issues.
Even if factors like pollution and carbon emissions are not something which keep you up at night, fuel costs just might, with these and efficiency regulations increasing year over year. Taking a page from alternative propulsions with cars and trucks, the maritime industry has been considering a range of replacements for diesel and steam engines. Here battery-electric propulsion is somewhat of an odd duck, as it does not carry its own fuel and instead requires on-shore recharging stations. Yet if battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) can be made to work on land with accompanying low ‘refueling’ costs, why not ships and boats?
A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) researchers Hee Seung Moon et al. as published in Nature Energy claims that a significant part of US maritime traffic can be electrified this way. Yet as a theoretical model, how close does it hit to the harsh realities imposed by this physical world which we live in?
Different Scales
An important aspect with any battery-powered craft is matching the battery capacity with the expected range. For BEVs like cars, the goal is to put as much battery capacity into the vehicle as possible, constrained mostly by factors such as the cost per kWh and how much physical volume is available in the vehicle for batteries without intruding on the driver and passengers. This is how we ended up with a range of BEVs that can cover a sizeable chunk of daily usage cases, as well as specific cases like buses where the daily range requirement is planned in advance and thus very easy to optimize for. Even so, a number of road-bound vehicles are hard to electrify with just batteries, such as cross-country trucks due to the sheer weight of the batteries required in most scenarios. Unlike a fuel tank, these batteries also do not lose weight as they become more empty.
In the case of boats, these smaller vessels tend to have pretty limited range. For example: tugs put in a lot of work, but either remain bound to a specific harbor or slowly follow a set watercourse like a river with a gaggle of barges in tow. Here you can have recharging infrastructure set up and charging points ready to go with relatively little difficulty in the harbor or at mooring spots along the route. More challenging are vessels with more erratic routes, not to mention ships with routes that are so long that no reasonable amount of batteries could power it without recharging or swapping batteries. The main case in point here is container ships.
In a 2022 study by Jessica Kersey et al. in Nature Energy it was found that for routes of less than 1,500 km electrification would be economical, assuming a battery price of $100 per kWh. At that point the main question remains how many batteries you can fit into the ship without negatively impacting the cargo load that it can carry. A container ship can travel around 540 km per day at its average cruising speed, with a shipping route like Los Angeles to Yokohama of 7,792 km (4,207.6 nautical miles) taking over two weeks:
Putting enough batteries on cargo ships to allow them to travel these routes without recharging in between is too much to ask. This is why the focus with battery-electric propulsion for ships and boats is on these shorter routes, where the total volume of batteries combined with electric motor(s) does not significantly exceed the volume (and weight) previously taken up by the diesel engine(s) and fuel tanks. As modelled by Kersey et al., for a small neo-Panamax container ship this would be the case if the route is kept below 3,000 km. Yet if the route is extended to something like 20,000 km the batteries would take up 32% of the containership’s carrying capacity.
Using batteries with higher energy density could help here, but as seen with today’s favorite battery chemistries using the higher density Li-ion comes with fewer charge cycles and worse stability, while LiFePO4 with its common use in especially BEVs and grid-storage and solar-storage batteries has much better longevity and safety record, at the cost of more weight per kWh.
Removable Batteries
Currently a number of battery-electric boats and ships are in service, with ferries being one of the first to be outfitted with such propulsion, case in point being the Norwegian Bastø Electric ferry. This 600 passenger and 200 car ferry uses its 4.3 MWh battery as well as a diesel generator to travel the 10 kilometer route between Moss and Horten. While docked the batteries are charged up when a charging point is available. This makes it not a pure battery-electric boat, but rather a hybrid.
More interesting are the two battery-electric containerships owned by China’s COSCO Shipping which recently began carrying shipping containers along the approximately 500 km route between Nanjing and Shanghai’s Yangshan Port. The Lu Shui (Green Water) 1 and 2 vessels are 700 TEU container ships that can travel at 10.4 knots over the Yangtze river. Perhaps most interesting about them is that they don’t have a battery bank integrated into their hulls, but rather take swappable batteries, with a standard capacity of 57.6 MWh, but with optional connection points for additional battery packs.
In the aforementioned LBNL study by Hee Seung Moon et al. the assumption was made that existing vessels would be retrofitted with batteries and electric motors, which would place a range of restrictions relative to newly designed and built vessels like COSCO’s newly commissioned ones. Being able to swap out battery packs along with shipping containers allows freshly charged packs to be ready when the containership docks and avoids the hassles of quick charging after each trip and replacing batteries after their approximately decade-long useful lifespan, for LiFePO4.
Practical Within Limits
It’s clear that for shorter routes the use of battery-electric propulsion can make sense. Depending on the local grid this can also be less polluting than burning low-sulfur diesel fuel, and conceivably be cheaper, though it all has to be worked out on a case-by-case basis. In the case of COSCO the reasoning appears to have been that these custom container ships are perfect for such a shorter route, with cost savings to be expected over the use of direct-driven diesel or diesel-electric propulsion. Ultimately the success of battery-electric propulsion will come down to simple economics, especially in the cut-throat shipping business.
Featured image & thumbnail: Containership MSC Texas. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
“BATTERY-ELECTRIC SHIPS: COMING SOON TO A HARBOR NEAR YOU?”
Nope, because there isn’t a harbor near me!
B^)
Well that just means you need a dredge. These have always been electric – a significant and slightly mysterious part of the Electrical Safety Regulations is primarily about dredges.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/markets/commodities/historic-gold-dredge-up-for-sale/JH4LT2H64A2ZQEPBMBFMHWRCPE/?c_id=3&objectid=11578080
“Ocean level rise: a harbor coming soon near to you?”
:o)
500km isn’t much for shipping. A good start though. Maybe it’s coming to my harbor, but it won’t be traveling far from it for a while
Electric shipping was quit common, especially along canals, in two main forms:
– Electric trolley wires above or along the canal, on which electric-powered ships (mainly tugs towing the actual cargo-carrying ships) would sail. Sometimes they would be propellor-powered, sometimes pulled themselves along a chain at the bottom of the canal. Working examples are the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riqueval_Tunnel and the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straussee_Ferry (I sailed on a ship through the first one, it is a really amazing experience)
– Electric tractors (road or rail bound) along the towpath, would get their power from a trollwy wire and would tow ships. Arpund the 1930’s the entire Northern French and Belgian canal system had these alomg the banks, but these have fallen out of flavour. The only working example that I know are the Panama Canal locks.
More info: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/12/trolley-canal-boats
Were not/is not diesel electric a thing ?
Direct drive is more efficient
It is, but at the time electric towed ships competed against human- or horse towed ships and wind-powered, not against diesel powered ships.
Google “Azipod”.
This isn’t green, it’s coal ships with extra steps. And every step is very very dirty. From the rare earth ores mined with environment destroying processes performed by slave labor, to the coal power plants supplying the actual electricity. Onboard nuclear power is the obvious solution and an already solved engineering problem. The only thing to figure out is how to get governments to allow it.
I don’t think a nuclear cargo ship is a good idea, even though functionally it would be good – all that radioactive material on a slow easy target vessel is just asking for the pirates to get in on the action, maybe sell the fuel for use in a dirty bomb etc. Nuclear power that is much much easier to protect and regulate has enough trouble getting built without making that sort of nonsense possible.
Also to single out the rare earth ores is massively disingenuous – the iron ores that make up 99% of the ships mass are plenty destructive, the slag piles (etc) of old mines can remain a problem for decades without cleanup and then you have to turn it into steel, and that needs lots of carbon from somewhere, so yet more coal (probably). As is assuming this is just coal power with extra steps, which in many parts of the world it wouldn’t be as coal is either entirely dead as a power source or phasing out and even in places that are heavily coal dependent like China they also have been investing in large solar array etc, which might only account for a small fraction of the electric consumption each year, but would mean your ‘coal powered’ electric boat is only partially coal powered.
I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, and even I think that nuclear cargo ships are a very bad idea!
I’m also for nuclear cargo ships. Though I think it’d have to be managed by navy nuclear engineers and keep a small troop presence on board as guards.
Electric-battery ships do not inherently require the use of slave labor for the battery components or the use of fossil fuel energy to recharge them.
In other words, you can solve those problems without saying “no” to battery-electric ships.
Well, they do, if you want to keep the price of batteries low enough.
Electric vehicles powered by oil-fired electricity emit about half the CO2 well-to-wheel compared to petrol cars. It’s even better with coal, and of.coirse electricity can be 100% renewable, while combustion fuels at this moment realistically are 90-100% fossil energy.
Yes, but that is just a consequence of economics.
These ships run on “bunker fuel” which is essentially a waste product of petroleum refining. That is why it is so polluting, but also why it is cheap.
Stopping the use of this fuel would be a great thing, but also cause problems, because we have to get rid of it. Maybe pump it back into dry oil wells? Can we even do that without “losing” a lot into the environment?
Everything is interconnected.
You can’t simply “solve” a problem like this.
There are thousands of moving parts, and each one needs to be accounted for to make real progress.
Yes, pollution is a very real problem, but in climate change, it’s CO2 that counts, and there are differences between bunker oil, diesel, petrol and LNG/LPG, but not substantial ones. The reason electric vehicles are so much more clean (co2-wise) is that in most fossil-powered plants, the steam turbine part mainly uses heat to expand something and can capture almost 55% of the energy, while an ICE uses the chemical expansion and throws away the heat, never gaining much more than 25% efficiency. The cost of steam turbines is they are only efficient at sized that are impractical in any vessel.
The whole electric distribution-storage-motor combo is insanely efficient, at about 85% as a very achievable number. So combined the well-to-wheel of oil fired power plant>power grid>battery>motive power is just regularly 45%ish.
refinery>distribution to fuel stations>ICE is about 20%.
Don’t some large ships use turbines for power?
You are quoting theoretical numbers. Shave off at least 15% for real life losses and cost cutting.
A ships engine nowadays has 55% as well … what is “chemical expansion” supposed to be? The “Internal Combustion Engine” is burning the fuel to heat up the gas when it is compressed, and extracts that energy by decompressing afterwards, which is essentially the same principle used in turbines.
Except it does reach the same 55% in large ship-sized engines, and these very same engines are used for grid load following and ramping needs on land. The 25% figure is a myth from a hundred years ago.
Not substantial differences?
Bunker fuel, aka Heavy Fuel Oil(HFO) is what is left after the cracking and distilling process. The cleaner we make the lighter products, the more sulfer, heavy metals, and organimetallics end up in the HFO.
Some HFO is up to 5% sulfer compounds and 0.5% metalloids.
This stuff is INCREDIBLY polluting, and countries have been trying to get rid of it’s use with treaties since the 80s.
There are anecdotes from ships crew about the soot from exhaust hanging in the air in foggy conditions, coating ship surfaces enough to leave streaks with your finger like a dirty candle, and tasting the metals in the air.
It is illegal to use above a certain latitude, and within a certain distance from Antarctica. Not that it stops some. Russian shipping and military vessels use it anyway.
Imagine you found out there were a bunch of power plants that burned old tires. THAT is the kind of thing we are talking about.
Go look it up.
It’s weird how people assume that electric power must always come from coal. The US only gets 16% of its electrical generation from coal, and that number is only going to get smaller.
China still burns a lot of coal, but they also have 12 nuke plants under construction right now.
Because they hate it, so of course it must be made of something they are predisposed to look down on.
The engineering program behind a nuclear cargo ship isn’t too bad, but the social studies problems are pretty big. Two that come to mind are pirates or having the crew decide to avoid waste disposal costs by tossing the spent fuel rods over the railing. I only wish I was making the second scenario up – it’s happened before.
On the other hand, if they toss the rods into a subduction zone, isn’t that actually ideal?
Spent fuel rods would be too hot to throw over the side. Besides there is international controls and accounting of spent fuel
Nobody is opening a reactor core at sea and dumping their spent fuel rods, that’s a laughable idea because of the sheer amount of work you’d need to do that.
Its not just opening the reactor, its undoing all the steam systems. You are talking drydock levels of effort. Its not like pulling a head or a piston on a diesel engine at sea, which is still rarely done.
And that spent fuel can be recycled and re-used.
Hopefully their electrics will be better than the ship that took out a bridge.
You heard it may have been retaliation by the Russians for USA involvement in Ukraine?
That would explain why the USA gov’t is paying to replace the bridge instead of the ship’s insurer.
Battery electric ships are not viable for shipping. An ocean going ship with a range of 500km isn’t even considered safe.
Well yeah, it would leave you stranded in the ocean
Fortinately, not all ships are ocean going. In The Netherlands there is an electric container ship (“Alphenaar”) that does a 124-km round trip daily, between a beer brewery and a distribution center. It has 3 shipping containers for battery, that can quickly be changed out by existing container infrastructure and charged on shore.
Ahh, so what you’re saying is that the toxic environment-destroying ship battery fires of devastatingly catastrophic size would be limited to waterways very close to civilization. Great!
It’s almost the same as toxic environment-destroying oil leak from a failed ship. Unlike an oil leak, a battery fire stays in one place.
Crude oil in ships: while harmful in its concentrated form, is created deep within the earth via abiotic processes which have yet to be understood and bubble up closer to the surface.
Lithium batteries: Highly toxic, highly refined poison which destroys the environment during every aspect of its manufacturing. Then, when it inevitably goes up in flames (which is FAR more likely to happen – Please compare the number of tanker spills worldwide vs. the number of tankers which have sailed the seas) it creates even more environmental damage, an inextinguishable fire, and oh yeah, whatever is on that ship also burns and releases more toxins into the air.
My goodness stop believing what the media tell you. They are not scientists. Most people who claim to be scientists don’t even fit the description. I’ll bet you still believe that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” despite that fabrication being debunked almost 2 decades ago.
How can anything catastrophic that happens on a ship “stay in one place”?
Ships are on the water.
Oil, chemicals, hamsters, whatever, go into the water.
That water moves.
Navies have used battery powered submarines for a very long time.
Actually they have used hybrid subs .
Yes but they do not use battery hybrid surface ships which should tell you something.
The case is not in your point. :(
Sails seem to be a more ecologically friendly option. Literal wind power is better when it comes to ships and keep the batteries in reserve for maneuvering in shallow waters.
This always feels like a cop-out.
If there are going to be emission regulations, the MUST be applied all the way up the stack.
“Look at our green ships. We have no emissions. Nevermind those coal power plants. We just HAPPENED to charge our fleet of ships here because it was close.”
Good news! Coal powered power plants already have incredibly efficient scrubbers and filters in their smoke stacks, something barely any heavy fuel oil powered ship has! You can put a cruise ship at a dock running hotel service on its own generators, put a coal plant next to it, and not even register the particulate emissions of the coal plant!
Furthermore – get this – you can make electricity from just the wind and the sun, or from some particularly spicy rocks melted down into rods – all with emissions small enough to not even register in a country’s total emissions!
The short range vessels that electric powered ships would represent hardly use heavy fuel oil.
The goal is to replace HFO with some form of electric.
Not my goal. Theirs. So they can claim it’s green.
Plenty of short range vessels were HFO, the fuel is so much cheaper you just keep it warmed up or running all the time and who cares at the waste or pollution it still costs less than only running the engine with a more refined fuel as you actually need it and turn key almost instant start… Though many transition to cleaner fuel its not because you can’t use HFO on shorter range and smaller vessel.
Snort. I care about more than sulfides.
Sulfer and metals are awful problems. But they are local.
CO2 is a global problem.
Those coal plants aren’t capturing the carbon.
“Clean coal” is marketing lies.
I’ve been arguing against HFO for several comments. You don’t need to convince me.
It’s just super clear that he moment we stop making any company play nice, hey do exactly the most profitable thing. No questions of the damages. Only profit.
If the port electric is cheap? Sure. Whatever.
If it’s generated by a power plant that burns old tires? Don’t tell me hey wouldn’t fill up anyway, and have no consequences.
That’s why I argued any regulations MUST include their source too.
If a limit is going to be put on emissions (and it should be) they need receipts showing that anywhere they charge up is at least as clean.
…also ban HFO like we have been trying to do since the 80s. And actually enforce it, unlike when Russian ships use it in waters where it is ALREADY banned.
Fascinating that nowhere in the writeup is any mention of the fact that a certain percentage of cells will go thermal and burn the entire pack (in a manner which can not be extinguished)…. While this rate of failure is a tiny fraction of a percent, the sheer number of cells required to move a ship would increase this risk in a massive way…. At which point, the whole ship turns into a horribly toxic burning mass which sinks to the bottom of the ocean? Oh, and everyone on the ship dies. And no one can get near it because of how toxic the emissions are from the fire (not even considering what else might be on the ship).
When is the junk science of lithium batteries being used for a “green” solution going to be replaced by something that is actually better for the environment than burning simple hydrocarbons, instead of worse?
It’s as if we are living the movie “Idiocracy”.
Not all lithium cells will really burn even if you try and make them, you have to really really screw up to get them going at all and if you treat the cells properly no matter which type of lithium chemistry used they won’t just ignite. In situations where like here you have a mass and volume budget the battery assembly will have design elements to help control it should anything ever go badly wrong… Also should a ICE powered ship ever catch on fire, which they can and do its just as toxic, and the oily gunk that is tossed over the oceans tends to be really really good for the surrounding environment, and need no cleanup effort at all…
Battery powered solutions often are massively better for the environment than burning hydrocarbon directly – even if the electricity comes form hydrocarbon sources the giant grid generator is going to be massively more efficient at turning fuel into useable energy, and even after the transmission, filling the battery, then using it afterward the overall efficiency of the battery powered electric system is better by a significant margin (and that is before you even count the infrastructure and transport costs of getting whichever blend of refined fuel to the end user and just assume that magically has no costs at all, while actually including the transport costs in the electric!). Then you get the exhaust gases, which in the smaller mobile generator tend to be awfully dirty and more toxic in comparison to the giant generators…
Lithium batteries are not the right solution to every problem, but as a general rule…
Look at the incident rate of lithium packs catching fire vs. ships. My goodness, dude, it’s common sense. Don’t put these toxic, volatile bombs on ships! It’s just crazy talk.
Where are the incident rate of ship sized battery pack fires?
There are no ship sized battery packs.
@Antii actually at this point there are many battery packs vastly larger than the ships could carry going online for grid balancing/energy trading, and quite a few buildings have had their own backups that are at least in the ballpark for decades! Other than a few problems with the first wave of big grid storage ones in Aus they have been fine.
And look at the type of battery device catching fire – is it the horde of Iphones? the huge new wave of GamingPC handhelds? Heck you’d think Valve’s Steamdeck would be spontanously combusting immediately from the way you talk, as they have not made comparable hardware before!!! Or is it in fact the cheapest shoddiest ‘eBike kits’ that might even have been safe if a HAD reader rather than an electronically ignorant member of the general public assembled them and other similar garbage tier products.
Garbage teir products are not what would be fitted to a ship – the investment required just in building the hull is too vast to cheap out in a way you know will prevent you from ever getting insurance for your ships again and mean you never recoup the costs. The extra cost for a properly engineered battery system that is reliable in the same way an I-phone is costs peanuts compared to the cost of the ship, and quite frankly made as shoddily as those e-bikes you’d not manage to complete construction of the ship anyway…
I’ve practically never seen a report of a reputable battery catching fire without darn good external factors to make them, even those Samsung phones from what 10 years ago barely count in the grand scheme of total phone sales… Great 1/10000th (probably way way less than that) of all phones in use at the time have a manufacturing defect that makes them catch fire.
Also shipboard fires from my understanding are actually pretty darn common, they just rarely achieve anything beyond getting the fire suppression system going so are not worth noting. Where crappy e-bike burns a house down and kills a family is big news.
+1
If the all batteries that use the third element in the universe are junk, I’d be happy to take all your portable electronics off your hands. I guess if we’re getting rid of anything toxic, your lead-acid car battery will have to go too. I’d let you keep the NiMH batteries even though that alkaline electrolyte is caustic, but I’m receiving reports that the “H” stands for hydrogen. Do you want the Hindenburg all over again?! Your alkalines will have to go too, they are too prone to leak. If you have any dry cells, those might be okay, but only as long as they’re kept outdoors – what if your house caught fire and the zinc evaporated in the flames?!
Or in other words, I think you’re being a bit dramatic about it, and I decided to be sarcastic. While either cleaning the exhaust of various ships or burning something with a naturally cleaner exhaust would be the easier option, eventually we may have enough supply of batteries that putting them in ships is a good use. At least, they’ll get used regularly for profit, and it should be easier to retrofit into a ship than some stuff would.
Fascinating that you seem to think there is any comparison between the environmental destruction and fire danger of lead acid or NiMH batteries vs. Lithium…. Where do you get your information? Fox news? Lmao
I even explicitly stated that I was being dramatic for effect, and because I wanted to demonstrate exactly what it would sound like if I portrayed other batteries the way you portray every battery that contains lithium – regardless which of the many many types that exist, which have wildly different characteristics, and which only contain a small proportion of lithium…
Batteries in a container ship will never be feasible. Generally speaking, using batteries in a ship is stupid, wind is a much better, less toxic and environmentally sound option. Its been done before.
Watch out with that “never”. It’s much more reasonable to say that batteries would have to be some number of times better than we’ve got – even a ridiculous and false number, like 100 times – before it makes sense. There’s always that chance that long after we’re all dead, someone builds such a thing. And if they do, then batteries can keep working even when the wind dies down a bit.
Wind has been done before and for a really long time. As soon as better options became available almost everyone stopped using wind for propulsion other than for recreational purposes.
It is not like there has been some recent breakthrough that makes wind propulsion more effective or reliable.
“Better options”
Better in what way? Certainly not simpler, cheaper, or cleaner. Maybe we shouldn’t chase efficiency at all costs.
So where are all the raw materials required for the motors, power distribution, and the staggering number of batteries going to come from? Domestically, these resources are kind of getting scarce. Copper, lithium, even lead if you want to go that direction – all in high demand already. That leaves China – the most prolific polluter on the planet. And that’s not even touching on the economics of a full conversion or even new vessel construction – which the US doesn’t even really do anymore for the cargo market.
Even being near a body of salt-water or maritime environment leads to accelerated corrosion – it’s in the air. Motors and batteries don’t like that. The turnover lifetime and additional maintenance of these systems would be colossal. It’s just not economically viable from every direction.
“Even being near a body of salt-water or maritime environment leads to accelerated corrosion – it’s in the air. Motors and batteries don’t like that. The turnover lifetime and additional maintenance of these systems would be colossal. It’s just not economically viable from every direction.”
Not really. Marine industry use electric motors for decades for thrust and auxiliary equipment. If you consider motor, transformer and drive as one it will still require less maintenance than similar diesel engine. I worked on a vessel where thrust was provided by electric motors and power by diesel generators. Even if you add drive and transformer to your motor the amount of maintenance and required number of consumables are still less than for diesel engine alone.
yeah, NO. You want to build a reactor and power a boat that way I’m all ears.
Not everything can be solved by batteries. Please stop telling us that they solve every problem we have with fossil fuels.
What about just focusing on increasing the efficiency of ICE’s, less wasteful harvesting/use of ‘fossil’ fuels, the cleaning on ICE exhaust … and going diesel electric if you absolutely feel the need for a battery?
The money spent on alternatives could have been put to what I mentioned above. The only reason research in to cleaning up ICE’s stalled is because … well I don’t know. Not sexy enough for addressing climate change? Not “cost effective”? “We just hate big oil so much!”
I’d have to argue it isn’t stalled at all, still some turning up now and then. But it has mostly reached the end of the line so deep into diminishing returns on the things that can be ‘fixed’, near the theoretical efficiency limits etc, and none of those fixes actually makes a real impact on CO2 production, might reduce the acid rain etc but it is still burning crap sourced from ancient dead stuff turned goo underground and thus adding to the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Other than the one research branch that is quite active of atmospheric capture synthetic fuels, which you can argue is all about cleaning up ICE but currently really not practical looking at all!
Battery power isn’t the right choice for everything that much is certain but everywhere you can make it fit the benefits are quite meaningful, not to mention often profitable. So of course money is going into things like electric cargo ships, as the only big downside is the range. Which for many ships going back and forth on relative short runs etc is irrelevant.
Why electric? Wind power, especially for long haul shipping, would seem to be a more practical solution.
Well, we did the wind powered ship already and phased them completely out of the cargo carrying game as soon as there was another power source.
Back in the olden days (1980’s if you HAD to ask) I recall seeing a news story about a ship that used large cylindrical mast like extensions from a cargo ship to cut back on fuel usage. Not sure that it was truly cost effective (you have to expect that such a thing needs maintenance and may have trade offs in ship handing). I’ll look for the story and post.
Are you thinking about this:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/22/travel/wind-powered-cargo-ship-cargill-bartech-climate-c2e-spc-intl/index.html
This is recent but I would not be surprised if the idea was kicking around in the 1980s.
As somebody who sail as ETO, I must say this is bullshit. Batteries have limited life and how they are going to replace such big batteries? Ships go in dry dock anyway but this is extra job and batteries cost lot of money. Does anybody remember that car carrier lost due electric (battery) car fire, safety anyone? Ferries are passenger ships so there are special safety regulation, and I really can’t imagine how it looks to evacuate ship in 5m swell in the middle of north sea. As per reliability of power electronics I must say that there are lot of diesel-electric ships (cruisers for example) and they works fine but occasionally have malfunctions. Worst part is that manufacturers don’t want to respect “right to repair that easy” throwing lot of cryptic error messages when something fart blue smoke. On chinese build ships half of technical documentation was incomplete. Anyway today ships switch to MGO (something like low sulfur diesel) or LNG/LPG and use scrubbers to clean exhaust.
Some quick calculation:
– Ferries usually have ~22 MW (2 engines, 11.000 kW per each), our crossing at 22-24 kn was ~24 h, in total used energy was ~528 MWh.
– Let say we used 100% power and we will ignore losses
– If we say that batteries are lithium-ion with energy density of 250 Wh/kg, we need 2112 tons of batteries
– Ferry net tonnage is ~7000 tons so with batteries that would drop to ~5000, some tonnage is saved by
removing main engines ~100 tons (maybe), but now you need more generators to charge batteries when needed
– So far everything looks OK but(t)… volumetric density of Li-ion is ~500 Wh/L (middle value) so volume of batteries is …….. 1.000.000 L or cube 100m x 100m x 100m (!!!), if battery is 100% packed
-Ferries are ~180-220 m long and 25-30 m wide and ~20m tall, so where to put 1ML battery?
I’d suggest the mistake there is to assume these are singular big monoliths of a battery – they will be smaller units, or built in place from the smaller parts (so can be replaced the same way if you ever do), or maybe for a container ship just a selectable amount of container at the bottom of the pile. If anything it probably makes keeping a ship in service easier than having to replace huge diesel engines that were equally built into the ship during its construction in many cases it seems, and also have limited (efficient/clean) lifespans before you have to cut big chunks out of the ship to get at them.
Obviously you are correct the energy density and capacity means a pure battery solution is not going to be the right solution for everything. But nowhere is it being claimed it is! For something like the Isle of Wight ferries it probably is the right solution (at least when it comes time to replace the current ones), as those cycle a few times a day across a very small stretch of water so even if the grid on the island can’t handle charging the ships at the other end you have Southampton and Portsmouth – big cities on the mainland so adding the infrastructure for which charging the ship isn’t going to require a huge upgrade. Probably the same thing for the slightly longer Ferries trips between the Island of Ireland and the UK, but crossing the North Sea from the UK, probably not.
A few have commented about the wastage in power when ships are charged with electrickery from a coal-fired power station.
I’ve had a brilliant idea. Why not power the ships directly with coal? Think of the power wastage saved.
I bet no one has thought of that yet.
I expect my Nobel prize for Eco Warriorism will come in the post.
Aye, right… :)