Recreational Boating & the Green Movement

[Codger2]

Scott, can you say what your electric range at speed to the marina is? And what is the displacement of your vessel? Best regards.

Although I cannot add to Scott's performance on his boat, I can give you real world numbers on 22 foot Duffys at their Mission Bay, San Diego rental facility. A typical day at the rental facility is running a 22 foot Duffy at 5.5 knots around a bay course that takes 90 minutes to complete. Without recharging, the boat does this 3 more times for a total of 360 minutes before it is attached to the charging station for the night. Now, assuming perfect conditions: calm water, light wind and very little current (tide) that's a total of 33 miles on one charge which will be completed over night. Depending on the number of passengers, the boat weighs in at 4500-5000lbs. I have not done a similar length cruise on my boat but after 2.3 hours the meter moved off the "full" peg about 1/32 of an inch. I do plan on operating it at twice that time to see what the meter says. I do have it on good authority that the Duffy 22' Cuddy will cruise at full throttle (5.5Knots) for 6.5 hours easily. Now, that achieves all my cruising goals since my prostate is only a 2 hour model which is the prime reason I bought the model with a marine head.

 

[Nomad Willy]

Izzat you in the boat Walt?

Well ... not making much wake = not using much power.
Wonder if I could hit 1/2 gph at 5.5 knots?
I think I could.

 

[darkside]

You can buy a pretty good hybrid boat about 5 miles from my house.
Check out that range at 8kn on a 34' boat.
https://herleyboats.com/catamaran-powercat-3400/

For Tesla I think his business model is as disruptive as his vehicles have proven so far. No doubt it is hard for traditional business owners to get their head around.
Even harder to point out where he is going wrong.

I import a different range of electric trucks but still admire what Musk has done

 

[JLD]

JLD wrote;
“and the lack of a nationwide availability of quick charging stations.”

There are no quick charging stations at all .. zero.

Not in terms of being anywhere near as quick as gasoline.
And face it ... gasoline is the standard .. what we’re used to.

... and 100 years ago, horses were the standard!

Fast changing will never be as fast as gasoline, but there are hundreds of Evgo stations today. Probably takes 20-30 minutes to get any quantity of charge into the batteries.

If they become more common and charge times continue to improve then I can see this as a real game changer (maybe for not you or I) but for a lot of folks.

Jim

 

[catalinajack]

And so every boater (enemy by your definition) is of the same opposite political persuasion of these supposed crazies? Makes no sense. Supply and demand rules all. Tax increases and decreases can alter the equation but the amount of change would have to be large relative to any current price.

I agree that diesel will be available on the water for decades. However, if the crazies continue to be in charge, it can easily be withdrawn for use in pleasure boats. They could do it tomorrow in several ways if they thought it would inconvenience enemies .

 

[Benthic2]

...Tesla...Even harder to point out where he is going wrong.....

For one thing, he can't seem to sell cars at a profit. Other car manufacturers have to buy emission credits from Tesla because they don't sell enough zero emission cars. In 2020, the first year Tesla has shown a profit, Tesla booked $1.5 Billion in revenue from these credits. Without them the company would have had substantial losses. Since 2020 was the last year for incentives on their cars, and as the other companies ramp up production of zero emission cars and buy less credits, shorting Tesla might be a good idea.

 

[Hippocampus]

GM has partnered with 2 Chinese companies for eVehicle development and production. Tesla does not make its profit on vehicles but rather on tax credits. North America will not have a profitable eVehicle manufacturer unless we can figure out how to source lithium and rare earths from someplace other than China. At present the US has one small rare earth mine.
Volvo promised to go all electric over a year ago. Smarter about development. In house. If buying stock look to rare earth and Li mining in Brazil and Southeast Asia rather than Tesla.

 

[Simi 60]

+1.

When I owned my last sailboat -- a 15-ton bluewater boat -- I spent roughly 130 days aboard per year. I probably used a total of 50 gals of diesel per year.

Yes but.........

I serious love sailing and have built and cruised windspeed + boats for decades but the reality is that to get one that could offer the level of comfort we enjoy now would be 10+ times more in dollars and would be unmanageable short handed.
Then I would have to turn the key and motor.

A sad realisation.

 

[Hippocampus]

Sailboat held 200g of diesel. Filled twice a year. Mostly burnt transiting the doldrums or by the genset. Other than when on passage rarely for propulsion. Had a rule if SOG at 5 knots iron genny went on. People speak of weather. More common than severe is extreme light air.

 

[Codger2]

Izzat you in the boat Walt?

Nope! That's a Duffy web site photo that happens to be the same model and color scheme as my boat. I don't have any photos of my boat running as I'm in a new marina and still looking for a shipmate to take some pics.

 

[denverd0n]

GM Targets 2035. That's like saying, "we see a likelihood sometime in the future we may".

My thought exactly. A lot of things can change in 15 years. It is cheap and easy for them to say this now, and win some points with the "green" crowd. Will it actually happen? I wouldn't hold my breath!

 

[moparharn]

Two quick points.

I am all in for electric or any other non carbon emitting propulsion, but for now it is completely on the tax payers back. A price worth paying to save our planet. If we do not get past the hurdles of power generation all of this is not going to happen. Forgive me for saying this. Nuclear.

Henry Ford has been quoted a couple times in this thread. How well do you know the man? Edsel was the true gem of Ford Motor. Any talk of embracing the future should invoke his name, not HF I.

 

[Group9]

There is a heck of a difference in cruising when diesel costs $4 (or even $6) a gallon as opposed to it costing $2 per gallon.

Other than that, I don't see the "Go green" movement affecting me much in the boating years I have left (15 to 20 tops).

 

[fryedaze]

Two quick points.

I am all in for electric or any other non carbon emitting propulsion, but for now it is completely on the tax payers back. A price worth paying to save our planet. If we do not get past the hurdles of power generation all of this is not going to happen. Forgive me for saying this. Nuclear.

Henry Ford has been quoted a couple times in this thread. How well do you know the man? Edsel was the true gem of Ford Motor. Any talk of embracing the future should invoke his name, not HF I.

[emoji106]

 

[BandB]

For one thing, he can't seem to sell cars at a profit. Other car manufacturers have to buy emission credits from Tesla because they don't sell enough zero emission cars. In 2020, the first year Tesla has shown a profit, Tesla booked $1.5 Billion in revenue from these credits. Without them the company would have had substantial losses. Since 2020 was the last year for incentives on their cars, and as the other companies ramp up production of zero emission cars and buy less credits, shorting Tesla might be a good idea.

Don't overlook his huge recall just issued either, over 130,000 vehicles, and not a cheap easy one.

 

[ksanders]

This electric car discussion is interesting, but I'd like to add some input as a professional utility power grid operator and engineer..

IF... If with todays power grid realities everybody came home at the end of the day and plugged in their electric car chargers the entire "grid" would go dark.

This is not debatable, this is a fact. The current infrastructure could not support a all electric world.

Here's how it works guys...

Your house might have a 200 or a 400 amp service but you and your neighbors cannot actually draw that amount of energy.

Why... The transformer supplying your house is too small. a few houses are generally served by a transformer. In my area we use a 25KW transformer as the "standard" size to serve up to four houses.

So... You say lets replace all those transformers... Millions of them.

Then the wire feeding the transformer is too small to support larger transformers.

Then the substations are not designed for the loads you will need.

And the transmission lines cannot handle the increased load.

And there is not enough power generation to support all those electric cars.

Gentlemen, we are so far from the ability to support a all electric vehicle world as to be incalculable. This is a nation wide problem that us electric utility professionals all know exists. Yes we talk about it, and frankly laugh at the idea of a all electric car world.

Not that it would not be nice, but it's just not going to happen in any of our lifetimes.

 

[rslifkin]

To some extent, the charging problem could be mitigated if there's more of a push towards charging at work rather than at home overnight. That shifts a lot of charging to daylight hours where it can be at least partially covered by solar. Which makes the grid issue less of a concern.



Some capacity has also been freed up over time (and will continue to be freed up) as various home appliances get more efficient. LED light bulbs, more efficient A/C, refrigerators, etc. I'd bet the average home power consumption has dropped noticeably in the last 10 years.

 

[BandB]

Wifey B: Am I the only one who when they saw the title of this thread thought of a boat hitting severe conditions and the resulting movement the captain might experience?

 

[KnotYet]

Two quick points.

I am all in for electric or any other non carbon emitting propulsion, but for now it is completely on the tax payers back. A price worth paying to save our planet. If we do not get past the hurdles of power generation all of this is not going to happen. Forgive me for saying this. Nuclear.

Henry Ford has been quoted a couple times in this thread. How well do you know the man? Edsel was the true gem of Ford Motor. Any talk of embracing the future should invoke his name, not HF I.

I forgive you for saying 'Nuclear'. Most of us past a certain age remember it fondly.
But did you give any thought to the taxpayer liability of nuclear power generation?
There is no energy source more subsidized than nuclear. Fortunately, its run is over.
Nuclear plants take longer to build and cost more to maintain than any other source.
The most cost effective and fastest power source to put online is renewable energy.

I agree with you about Edsel Ford.

 

[sbman]

This electric car discussion is interesting, but I'd like to add some input as a professional utility power grid operator and engineer..

IF... If with todays power grid realities everybody came home at the end of the day and plugged in their electric car chargers the entire "grid" would go dark.

This is not debatable, this is a fact. The current infrastructure could not support a all electric world.

I doubt that the realities of how much power copper conductors can carry will sway much opinion.

On that same note, I find it amusing how infrequently the overall ecological cost is factored into the green discussion. From a complete overhaul of the electrical grid to the waste issues created by utilizing billions of batteries that need to be processed at end of life, and all of the electronics/e-waste that is generated as well. It makes one wonder what the net level of harm to the environment is of one versus the other, it's a complex issue.

 

[ksanders]

I doubt that the realities of how much power copper conductors can carry will sway much opinion.

On that same note, I find it amusing how infrequently the overall ecological cost is factored into the green discussion. From a complete overhaul of the electrical grid to the waste issues created by utilizing billions of batteries that need to be processed at end of life, and all of the electronics/e-waste that is generated as well. It makes one wonder what the net level of harm to the environment is of one versus the other, it's a complex issue.

Folks do not want to listen to reality. They think that everything will work, and they use phrases like "smart grid" and "green energy" to explain what they simply do not understand.

The problem is there are some fairly intelligent people that work at the power companies across this country, and they have to deal with the realities. We cannot turn catch phrases into reality, it's just not that simple.

BTW, the "best" renewable energy on this planet is hydro electric. It's inexpensive, reliable, and does not suffer from the normal fluxuations of wind or solar. Plus it has it's own storage mechanism built in.

If I dial in X megawatts of hydro energy I get exactly that. Every time. The same cannot be said for wind or solar yet because there is no storage to mitigate the instanious fluctuations on output.

But... Try to build a dam in America today and see just how quickly that project gets shut down.

 

[Nomad Willy]

Kevin, but they’re tearing down dams as we speak.

 

[fryedaze]

Solar and wind have poor capacity factor. A 10kw solar array on your house will only give you about 50 kwhrs a day on the best days. All that power will give you half a charge on your 85 kw Tesla. Forget your home AC,, frig etc. Solar and wind are anemic compared to other generation sources. Its a crime that renewable company's tell us the are installing 100 MW of solar or wind generation. The truth is the 100 MW of solar is 15 to 20MW of capacity and the wind is about 25MW.
Most people know little about the magnitude of power they need/use. As mention before, the grid has to change. The energy coming out of all those gas pumps will have to be produce some how. Solar and wind will not even come close.

 

[Northern Spy]

Folks do not want to listen to reality. They think that everything will work, and they use phrases like "smart grid" and "green energy" to explain what they simply do not understand.

The problem is there are some fairly intelligent people that work at the power companies across this country, and they have to deal with the realities. We cannot turn catch phrases into reality, it's just not that simple.

BTW, the "best" renewable energy on this planet is hydro electric. It's inexpensive, reliable, and does not suffer from the normal fluxuations of wind or solar. Plus it has it's own storage mechanism built in.

If I dial in X megawatts of hydro energy I get exactly that. Every time. The same cannot be said for wind or solar yet because there is no storage to mitigate the instanious fluctuations on output.

But... Try to build a dam in America today and see just how quickly that project gets shut down.

Further to Kevins point, The Grid, By Gretchen Bakke is an excellent read.

 

[KnotYet]

New power customers require new power capacity. This is as it always has been.
The existing grid is different today than it was 10 years ago and will be in 10 years.
Meanwhile wind power surpassed hydro in Gw delivered 2 years ago and solar will too.

Furthermore, hydropower is not at all constant when looked at over a span of years.
Gw delivery varies like a heartbeat due to rainfall variation while wind and solar power
trends steadily upward as new capacity is added.

Renewables are the main growth of the industry today and at an ever increasing rate.
Without them the statement would be: 'we can't build power plants fast enough'.
Now you point out 'how do we transport this new capacity'?
It's not the worst problem to have. Really, only the anti-EV crowd misses the obvious.
It sounds like a good way to employ people and make a lot of money.
Electric vehicles and the demand they create is not going away.

 

[moparharn]

As long as tax payers subsidize every bit of it. I want carbon free power, but I am not sure what is the best way is to get it. I prefer nuclear, but that is very unpopular. I DO NOT like wind power. It is a blight on our beautiful water front vistas (at least in the Great Lakes). I cannot stand to see those towering figures destroy the natural views like some invading alien robots on the land. They kill migratory waterfowl and protected birds of prey. Never mind the thousands of blinking red lights destroying an otherwise beautiful starlit night.

Wind generation is really the only popular alternative I have indigestion with. If we can invest in a well thought out renewable, safe, pollution free alternative I am willing to sacrifice to get it. We owe it to our planet, our ancestors, and our grandchildren's grandchildren.

New power customers require new power capacity. This is as it always has been.
The existing grid is different today than it was 10 years ago and will be in 10 years.
Meanwhile wind power surpassed hydro in Gw delivered 2 years ago and solar will too.

Furthermore, hydropower is not at all constant when looked at over a span of years.
Gw delivery varies like a heartbeat due to rainfall variation while wind and solar power
trends steadily upward as new capacity is added.

Renewables are the main growth of the industry today and at an ever increasing rate.
Without them the statement would be: 'we can't build power plants fast enough'.
Now you point out 'how do we transport this new capacity'?
It's not the worst problem to have. Really, only the anti-EV crowd misses the obvious.
It sounds like a good way to employ people and make a lot of money.
Electric vehicles and the demand they create is not going away.

 

[fryedaze]

New power customers require new power capacity. This is as it always has been.
The existing grid is different today than it was 10 years ago and will be in 10 years.
Meanwhile wind power surpassed hydro in Gw delivered 2 years ago and solar will too.

Furthermore, hydropower is not at all constant when looked at over a span of years.
Gw delivery varies like a heartbeat due to rainfall variation while wind and solar power
trends steadily upward as new capacity is added.

Renewables are the main growth of the industry today and at an ever increasing rate.
Without them the statement would be: 'we can't build power plants fast enough'.
Now you point out 'how do we transport this new capacity'?
It's not the worst problem to have. Really, only the anti-EV crowd misses the obvious.
It sounds like a good way to employ people and make a lot of money.
Electric vehicles and the demand they create is not going away.

California dreaming

 

[ksanders]

New power customers require new power capacity. This is as it always has been.
The existing grid is different today than it was 10 years ago and will be in 10 years.
Meanwhile wind power surpassed hydro in Gw delivered 2 years ago and solar will too.

Furthermore, hydropower is not at all constant when looked at over a span of years.
Gw delivery varies like a heartbeat due to rainfall variation while wind and solar power
trends steadily upward as new capacity is added.

Renewables are the main growth of the industry today and at an ever increasing rate.
Without them the statement would be: 'we can't build power plants fast enough'.
Now you point out 'how do we transport this new capacity'?
It's not the worst problem to have. Really, only the anti-EV crowd misses the obvious.
It sounds like a good way to employ people and make a lot of money.
Electric vehicles and the demand they create is not going away.

Ok, here are some actual power grid realities. These are things they don't tell the general public.

Reality #1 Load and generation must be equal at all times (this is at a sub second level)

Reality #2 Wind is not constant. It fluxuates literally being there one second and not being there the next. It is also not on demand. What this means is that operators need to keep spinning reserves available that can react at a sub second level. This means having a inefficient running plant that is not putting out it's full capacity to make up for the natural variation in wind energy produced.

Reality #3 Solar is wonderful but it is not there in the evening. Depending on a utilities mix of loads often the peak loads are in the evening.

Reality #4 except in the desert Southwest solar varies just like wind. When a cloud moves into view the output decreases dramatically and instantly.

Reality #5 We know a year in advance what hydro capability we have. This is called "pond" We know what our yearly capacity in megawatt hours is, so it is to us extremely stable.

solar and wind do help reduce fossil fuels and hydro use, but they will never replace them until a economical bulk storage solution is developed, and implimented.

oh, yes, from a generation standpoint the "grid" is not the same as it was 10 years ago.

From a transmission and distribution standpoint it is much the same.

 

[fryedaze]

Here are the facts on new capacity. What the table fails to explain is you have to reduce the wind number by 75% and solar by 82% to compare to 24/7 generation like coal, nuclear, has and some hydro. Gas far out paces wind and solar for actual generation.

As long as tax payers subsidize every bit of it. I want carbon free power, but I am not sure what is the best way is to get it. I prefer nuclear, but that is very unpopular. I DO NOT like wind power. It is a blight on our beautiful water front vistas (at least in the Great Lakes). I cannot stand to see those towering figures destroy the natural views like some invading alien robots on the land. They kill migratory waterfowl and protected birds of prey. Never mind the thousands of blinking red lights destroying an otherwise beautiful starlit night.

Wind generation is really the only popular alternative I have indigestion with. If we can invest in a well thought out renewable, safe, pollution free alternative I am willing to sacrifice to get it. We owe it to our planet, our ancestors, and our grandchildren's grandchildren.

 

[Simi 60]

Solar and wind have poor capacity factor. A 10kw solar array on your house will only give you about 50 kwhrs a day on the best days. All that power will give you half a charge on your 85 kw Tesla. Forget your home AC,, frig etc. Solar and wind are anemic compared to other generation sources. .

So how is it that 2.5kw of solar on our roof runs several 240v fridge freezers, 240v hot water system, 42 inch TV, several computers and screen plus numerous other appliances, pumps, light AND keeps our 880ah @ 24v battery bank fully charged for night time running?