Saturday, March 24, 2018

[Electric Boats] Re: Quite the potential project.. but is it feasible?

 

Feasible? Of course. I would try to do about 5kw of solar panels, though. You will pretty much want to completely cover the boat overhead with a solar canopy. Shade being another benefit of that, of course. You could do this with an AC system like from an electric car. At 100 tons you would want a fairly big motor or maybe two motors. You would want probably four normal electric car battery packs minimum, Just off the top of my head. You should get your cruse speed okay, but your panic speed might be a problem. The system will be expensive and in that power range a straight diesel drive would be cheaper, but I understand that you may well have important reasons to prefer electric anyway. Now 100hp would be about 74.6w, just to put things in perspective. That may well be a lot more power than you need. However engineering the system capability that high does NOT mean you have to run it at that power level, and 5kw is 5kw, regardless whether it is a 5kw motor running full bore, or a 100kw motor just ticking along. There is very little overhead involved in running a bigger motor, unlike the case of a diesel where a large part of the power consumed is used just to move the mass of the internal parts and support combustion in large cylinders. A 10hp diesel is a lot more efficient at 10hp than a 100hp diesel at 10hp, IOW. With electric the extra capability costs little in power consumption when it is not needed. A 20kw generator should be plenty. A large generator ran at a big load for a short while is a more flexible system than a small generator running nearly constantly. You will have longer runs without the generator. You will be able to shut down all engine noise for passing through quiet zones or for conversing with folks on the bank. Autostart capability would be cool but mostly you will want to monitor, and start/stop as you see fit according to immediate conditions.

It will probably be impractical to run on just solar charging. Be aware of that. But it will definitely increase your range between ICE charging periods or shore power charging stops. The more solar, the better. But at less than maybe 2kw for such a boat you may as well forget all about it.

This is going to be an expensive project. That, I can promise you. The electrical standards will be a lot different than what smaller boats follow. At the power levels you will need, you can forget about a 48v system, certainly. You will be running somewhere between 144v and around 300v. I think Tesla uses a 375v system in their cars,  just to put it into perspective. Im not sure but I think old diesel subs ran anywhere up to about 600v. There will be a lot of safety and engineering issues to deal with, and the average kitchen table engineer will be out of his league. A marine system is not the same as a land vehicle system. But hardware already in mainstream use by the electric car industry is a good place to start.

You might want to do some research on WW1 and WW2 submarine propulsion systems of all countries concerned. Not saying you need a system with even a large fraction of that power, but a look at diesel electric submarine propulsion should serve to better demonstrate principles and real world practicalities and also as an eye opener and an incubatior for ideas.

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