T-Pain Is On A Boat: [Electric Boats] Introduction, was FW: [EVDL] Spring is here,

Saturday, October 31, 2009

[Electric Boats] Introduction, was FW: [EVDL] Spring is here,

G'day All

--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, "Myles Twete" <matwete@...> wrote:
>
> Forwarding this post with permission from poster to EV list regarding an
> outboard conversion...

Myles encouraged me to join this group, as the poster of the "spring is here" message to the Electric Vehicle Discssion List (EVDL). So here I am, and a bit of an introduction:

I live in Tasmania, Australia (hence "spring...") where I have a small electrotechnology business servicing, reparing, calibrating whatever local industry breaks ( www.teknik.com.au if anyone is interested enough). My background is mostly industrial electronics and industrial instrumentation, with a bit of radiocommunications and metal fabrication thrown in for good measure. My father (now retired) was a commercial fisherman, so my family background includes a lot of boats.

I've been interested in electric propulsion for about 20 years, and have been trying to get an on-road electric vehicle conversion done for about 10 years, hope to have one finished soon (a 1991 Honda Civic hatchback).

For the last few years I've been helping the Australian Maritime College Vessel Propulsion Lab (now part of the University of Tasmania) with their "Greenliner" electric boat, a conversion of a 6m model fast-ferry hull to a single-seat electric boat that is used for student final-year projects. This uses a 48V system, a GE-EV1 SCR controller and (usually) 210Ah of gel batteries. Motor is a rebuilt/reconfigured forklift hydraulics type motor, set up between bearings with a reaction arm, allowing it to be its' own dyno when a load cell is connected to the arm. Propulsion is a water jet, which is far from ideal as a choice for propulsion but lends itself to the student projects being undertaken regarding the hull. One of the projects is low-speed application for water jets (in part sponsored by a jet manufacturer to generate information to be able to model jets for low speed applications).

The AMC-VPL senior lecturer persuaded me to build a couple of outboards to be used as part of the AMC-sponsored 'alternative propulsion rally' at last years' wooden boat festival here. The smaller motor is essentially completed, with the exception of needing a better fan on the outboard cover, as the stuff inside the cover gets too warm. The bigger one has been left sitting for now as it needs some mods and a new cover, but works fine. I started with outboards that were really in not good enough condition, but finding something with the right attributes that wasn't either out of my budget or missing the bits that I needed proved to be a problem.

Last summer my brother built a simple 11' plywood dinghy that turned out to be inappropriate for his purpose, so we did a deal. Over winter (with the help of dad) completed fitout and paint plus modified the hull with boxed in battery enclosures (under the middle seat), floatation, paint, etc. The smaller of the two outboards is a good match to this boat, so is being used with it.

Last weekend we put it into the water for the first time since the wooden boat festival, all worked well (as it should) but showed up some things that need to be done still - the outboard takes up too much of the transom seat area so will be put onto a bracket, so I can sit on the transom seat. The sides toward the bow are too flat, so in a light chop a fair bit of water splashes inboard. The plan at the moment is for a couple of slim 'pods' for the outside of the forward third of the hull that will also be some floatation. The transom has the same 'splash' issue when backing out from the boat ramp (this was anticipated) so the outboard bracket will be a boxed-in arrangement so that the splashes are less likely to come in.

That is far too much information for an introduction post, but never mind.

Regards

[Technik] James