GNHBus-
Try not to beat your head against the experts on this list---Eric has been one of the most detailed and thorough in his analysis over the many years he's been on this forum and trust me, he knows what he's talking about. Battery development does occur in the U.S.---two of the best lithium battery manufacturers are here in the States: A123 and Kokam. These have the lowest internal resistance available and quickest recharge times. The American company, DeWalt, uses A123's in their best portable battery packs. The fastest drag racing EV's (e.g. the Killacycle and White Zombie) use these batteries---Killacycle uses A123's and WZ uses the Kokams. Unfortunately, most of us cannot afford these batteries and the Kokams are largely unavailable at the large size required for EV's.
Chinese are pursuing ALL technology, period. And while they've produced various lithium batteries for years, including EV-sized cells, until recently the quality, capacity and power capabilities of these has frankly, sucked. But the Chinese make things cheap. And with reluctant improvements to quality, more and more of EV-scale lithium batteries are being imported here that appear to have acceptable quality.
Indeed batteries and cost are the limiting factor---but as Eric points out, also the recharging infrastructure. A boat requires a lot of power to cruise and still more to plow thru the water or plane. So while you might need 20kw for cruising and could indeed have enough batteries to store 1hr worth of charge for that level of cruising, there's little chance that most of the boats considered in this forum could fit enough batteries for 4-hr, let alone 8-hr of cruising at that power level. Worse, say the next generation of batteries makes it affordable and energy density high enough to fit 160kwh of batteries onboard. And say you cruised all day and used that 160kwh up. And you want to then plug in at the visitor dock at 8pm, go to sleep, then be fully charged by 8am the next morning for your next leg of your cruise. With but 12-hrs of recharge time, you'd need more than 13kw of power delivered all night long to the batteries. Even at 220v, that's about 60-amps of current! Try to find a marina that has that amount of current available.
This is all distracting from the incentives title of the thread, but just wanted to point out that you can't have high power, but without high capacity, you won't have much time or range. And if you were to have high capacity and use it up, without high power charging infrastructure, you will be sitting at the dock for a long time until the next long leg of the journey.
-MT
From: electricboats@yahoogroups.com [mailto:electricboats@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of GNHBus@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 1:00 PM
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Re: Government incentives?
The disbelief is due to what ? It appears you are identifying the batteries as the limiting item and hence the disbelief? I have no idea of the range (at what speed) the Swedish Nimbus 27 e depletes it's batteries or how long to recharge, but if your info is fact, sounds like they could use higher density batts, if I could get that Nimbus 27e to 8 hrs top speed & 2 hrs charging , What would that do for job creation in USA ?
The Chinese are pursuing this Battery Technology with reckless abandon, it appears many other countries are pursuing electric propulsion technology with much more vigor than the United States which seems ridiculous. What Vendor supplies the highest density, fastest charging Marine Battery ?
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric <ewdysar@yahoo.com>
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, Feb 3, 2011 3:41 pm
Subject: [Electric Boats] Re: Government incentives?
GNHBus,
I think that if you told any boater that you had an electric propulsion system that would perform exactly like any ICE that you would be met with disbelief. Tell me the same and you'll get the same reaction, and I know something about the topic.
Yep, I'm familiar with the Nimbus 27e. A nice boat, but acording to their info, it's batteries will be completely depleted in 52 minutes of cruising and it will take 28 hours to "refuel" (230V charging). Not exactly the same performance as "any other ICE". For some users, that may be OK, for most powerboaters that I know, it would not be acceptable.
While Nimbus doesn't expect to sell any of these boats until 2015, the price has not been set. I would expect that the 27e will be at least 50% more expensive that the ICE version. Their battery pack (I assume lithium) appears to be somewhere between 50 and 100kWh which will add more than $25,000US to their wholesale costs for the batteries alone, no electronics.
Diesel-electric ("hybrid") drives are used in many large/powerful commercial vessels. Unfortunately, these systems don't scale down to pleasure boat sizes very well and the benefits just don't materialize. But I'm not saying that it can't be done, I would love to hear how well a hybrid drive would work on your boat. I know that in my 30' ketch, I don't really have the room or carrying capacity. For my use, the Propulsion Marine drive and 8Kwh LiFePO4 batteries should be enough.
Fair winds,
Eric
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, GNHBus@... wrote:
>
>
> The Tug Boat Industry (for one) is moving towards E-Prop/Hybrid technology, there are scores of successful data on this globally, the US is just simply far behind and it would take a very interesting politician to make that aggressive move, funny thing about politicians, they don't like to lead due to risk.
> If I told any boater that I had an electric propulsion system that would perform exactly like any ICE, what do you think the reaction would be ?
> Have you seen the Nimbus 27e ?
>
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