T-Pain Is On A Boat: [Electric Boats] Nice electric runabout

Saturday, November 7, 2015

[Electric Boats] Nice electric runabout

Hi all!

For those who likes classic look, I just discovered this nice electric runabout:

http://www.electricboats.ca/models/bruce-22e/

The engineering is quite impressive.

Starting at $110,000 USD.

The Bruce 22e at the 2013 Toronto Boat Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CYPya59cmY

The Bruce 22e in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAN7uCW6WFg

The first 6 minutes is in French, so I tried my best to translate it for you.

See the transcript below.

Enjoy!

Pierre

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

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We are at the St-Lawrence Yacht Club (http://www.rstlyc.qc.ca) with Ian Bruce aboard the Bruce 22e, a boat built by Montreal Classic Boatworks (http://www.mtlcb.ca). Ian Bruce is an industrial designer who has spent his entire life in the water environment. He was himself a sailor, went 2 times to the Olympic Games and has dedicated his life to boat building, especially sailing boats. He is the father of the Laser, with Bruce Kirby. He also worked on the Ninety-Niner. He was one of the founders of the Laser Company in Canada. Later in Montreal, he made the 400Z Club, Byte and Megabyte. One day, he started building motor boats. He made an incursion into electric boat with the Canadian Electric Company (http://www.electricboats.ca). He designed 2 small electric boats. One day, he decided to build a replica of an English runabout. This is the boat Ian will present us today.

We are facing the propulsion system. The thing that jumps out is the 2 compartments where the batteries are stored. In fact, it is a single battery. A car battery has 3 or 6 cells. Here, we have 122 cells in series to make a single battery. These are Phosphate lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have a much greater life expectancy than the acid batteries. If they are treated correctly, that is to say, they are prevented from lowering down below 15% capacity, and if we avoid charging beyond 95%, if we have a good load control system, the batteries will handle between 2 000 and 3 000 charge cycles. It's huge, practically the life of the boat. For weight balance reasons, there are batteries on either side of the boat. The batteries and the electric motor are mounted on a steel mount. The electric motor develops 135 kW, which is equivalent to 185 horsepower. We saved 100 kg (220 lbs) compared to a gasoline engine. It certainly has the weight of the batteries, but there is no gas tank. So the boat is ultimately lighter than the gas powered boat, and therefore, it will plane earlier. The boat will plane at 9 knots.

The system was developed by a Florida company called Regen Nautic (http://regennautic.com). Pierre Caouette and Jean-Marc Zanni engineered the system. There is a lot of power. A lever in the front controls the torque. An electric motor can give all its torque at once. All available power can be delivered instantly. If you do that, you will twist the propeller or the propeller shaft. To prevent this from happening, you must have an electronic control system. If you ask for all available power, the system will understand that it must regulate this power- it will not deliver it at once, but adjust so that it does not break the system. All the energy supplied by the batteries gets here in a control system that converts to the necessary phase to run the AC motor at 400 volts. The enemy of electric propulsion is heat. This system releases a lot of heat. To cool the compartment, a closed circuit cooling system was installed, with a heat exchanger. It is very common on boats. This cooling system runs everywhere within the compartment and is cooled by raw water coming into the heat exchanger. To complete all this, you have battery chargers on each side. Charging time depends on the voltage available at the docks. If you have 50 amp 240 volt, it will recharge in 1.5 hours. If you have 30 amp 120 volts, it will take a little longer. You can even make coastal cruising and spend much of the day on the water.