Stranded

Benthic2 said:

They are already here!

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Interesting. Towards the end he gives range information. At 8 kts, it's consuming 60kw/hr. At 10kts, 100kw/hr. LFP battery bank is 210kw, so max range under battery is around 20-ish nms.

On a bright sunny day, boat is net-zero at 4-5 kts meaning solar replenishes usage.

Or you can run the generator for charging and a stated range of 650 nms.

The boat has 42 solar panels, though size is not discussed. From past experience, I'd guess 10-15 of those panels are needed to power creature comforts such as AC and refrigeration.

While I applaud efforts such as the Silent 60 to explore energy alternatives, it's a bauble and not very practical except for harbor cruises. An oversized Duffy.

Peter

mvweebles said:

Interesting. Towards the end he gives range information. At 8 kts, it's consuming 60kw/hr. At 10kts, 100kw/hr. LFP battery bank is 210kw, so max range under battery is around 20-ish nms.

On a bright sunny day, boat is net-zero at 4-5 kts meaning solar replenishes usage.

Or you can run the generator for charging and a stated range of 650 nms.

The boat has 42 solar panels, though size is not discussed. From past experience, I'd guess 10-15 of those panels are needed to power creature comforts such as AC and refrigeration.

While I applaud efforts such as the Silent 60 to explore energy alternatives, it's a bauble and not very practical except for harbor cruises. An oversized Duffy.

Peter

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Thanks Peter - Now I don't need to spend time to find out what you so well placed on a post. And, yes... Oversized Duffy. Also, I often wonder, with all those solar panels on boats - what the heck happens to them panels in really rough seas??

EDIT: After posting I watched entire video. Not too bad for electric power boat! Future begins each morning!

My Son In Law has an all electric Porsche. He loves it. He lives in L.A. and has a two hour commute, sometimes less since he can use the HOV lane. He charges it at his home overnight, always ready to go. A range of 300 or 400 miles, I guess.

He recently drove from California to Wisconsin, He rented a car for the trip. I asked why he didn't bring the Porsche. He looked at me like I was nuts and said "No Way", couldn't keep it charged.

Like I stated, he loves it. I wouldn't own it.

pete

Pete Meisinger said:

My Son In Law has an all electric Porsche. He loves it. He lives in L.A. and has a two hour commute, sometimes less since he can use the HOV lane. He charges it at his home overnight, always ready to go. A range of 300 or 400 miles, I guess.

He recently drove from California to Wisconsin, He rented a car for the trip. I asked why he didn't bring the Porsche. He looked at me like I was nuts and said "No Way", couldn't keep it charged.

Like I stated, he loves it. I wouldn't own it.

pete

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I think that's an issue caused by the paucity of chargers across the " interior". My niece, a Caltrans engineer, thinks nothing of driving her Tesla anywhere on the west coast. Gets an 80% charge in the length of a lunch stop.

Art said:

Thanks Peter - Now I don't need to spend time to find out what you so well placed on a post. And, yes... Oversized Duffy. Also, I often wonder, with all those solar panels on boats - what the heck happens to them panels in really rough seas??

EDIT: After posting I watched entire video. Not too bad for electric power boat! Future begins each morning!

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At 100kw/hr, figuring some inefficiency and making the math easy, probably around $20/hr of grid electricity. Or around 4-gals of diesel for 10-kts. My friends 52-ft power cat burns around 8 gph at 10 kts.

The Silent 60 apparently has a generator sized to power the two 150kw electric motors which can push the boat to 17kts (similar speed as my friends PC52 Horizon). The generator must be massive - over 200kw, which means it's grossly oversized for house loads and charging - at 20% charge rate, the battery bank should have a 40kw-50kw charger.

At a much grander scale, this is the same problem Willard grappled with when they installed 5hp 3-phase electric get-home motors in their 1970s-1980s vintage W40s. The required generator was just too big, bulky, and expensive for ordinary usage.

I'm sure technology will solve many of these issues and i eagerky await advances. But you can't outrun raw physics. And the wild marketing claims don't help.

Peter

I don’t know why y’all are so enamored with technology. These new fangled “ow-toe-mobiles” are ridiculous! I certainly won’t ever need one in my lifetime. After all, I have a perfectly good set of horses and a proper buggy. And they won’t run out of, what is it? Gasoline?! No sir, I’ll stick with my good old fashioned horse if I need to get about…

mvweebles said:

While I applaud efforts such as the Silent 60 to explore energy alternatives, it's a bauble and not very practical except for harbor cruises. An oversized Duffy.

Peter

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This is no expedition yacht but I think dismissing it entirely is overstating the weaknesses. If you get 24 miles at 8kts on batteries alone, combining that with the available power from solar might get you 35-40miles, which is probably about average daily travel for a cruising boat that is not relocating. You always have the option to slow down or start the gen if you have a longer run.

Lithiums can be charged around .5C and you could run the gen the last hour of a longer run, leaving you at an anchorage fully charged with no gen needed overnight. A shorter run wouldn’t require the gen. It would take some adjustments in approach but it is closer to a useable boat than many previous versions.

Put that boat in the BVI/USVI where there is lots of sunshine and short runs and you might never run the gen. Not crazy at all.

Moonfish said:

I don’t know why y’all are so enamored with technology. These new fangled “ow-toe-mobiles” are ridiculous! I certainly won’t ever need one in my lifetime. After all, I have a perfectly good set of horses and a proper buggy. And they won’t run out of, what is it? Gasoline?! No sir, I’ll stick with my good old fashioned horse if I need to get about…

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Oh come on now. It is a Fad, either get on board or get out of the way.

guy with a boat said:

This is no expedition yacht but I think dismissing it entirely is overstating the weaknesses. If you get 24 miles at 8kts on batteries alone, combining that with the available power from solar might get you 35-40miles, which is probably about average daily travel for a cruising boat that is not relocating. You always have the option to slow down or start the gen if you have a longer run.

Lithiums can be charged around .5C and you could run the gen the last hour of a longer run, leaving you at an anchorage fully charged with no gen needed overnight. A shorter run wouldn’t require the gen. It would take some adjustments in approach but it is closer to a useable boat than many previous versions.

Put that boat in the BVI/USVI where there is lots of sunshine and short runs and you might never run the gen. Not crazy at all.

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You make some good points and I'll temper my criticism a bit. But only a bit - I figure there is a lot of salemanship going on here. When you crunch the numbers, solar for propulsion is a gimmick: this is essentially a diesel-electric setup which is nothing new.

Here is a Yachtworld listing for the boat that gives a LOT more specs on machinery, capacity, etc (smaller version is $3.2m USD). They have three versions - the one in the video is the middle one with 145kw generator and 1000 liters diesel.

https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/2023-silent-60-7318314/

The listing states solar generation at 17kw/hr (works out to 400-watts/panel, which is about right). If you convert watts to Btus, then to diesel, you get an equivency of around 2-gallons of diesel. But let's say diesel engines only produce 33% efficiency - so the full day of sunshine produces equivilent of [maybe] 6-gallons of diesel. That's it

So when you dig into the cost of batteries, solar, controls, chargers, etc. It's a helluva lot of effort/expense to generate equivilent of 6-gals of diesel per day. So the target customer has to be wealthy and either (a) incredibly altruistic; or (b) doesn't know how to use a calculator. Mind you Jimmy Cornell tried this a couple years ago on a sail-cat and it too folded under the weight of reality.

That said, I do believe efforts like these are the beginning, not the end. I hope it leads to something sustainable.

Peter

I was visiting with my son who lives in Duluth. I said I bet we will never see a new electric vehicle in Northern Wisconsin and especially never in Duluth with it's cold weather and steep hills.

He said there are new Teslas are all over the place up there.

Go Figure.

pete

No new technology is ever conceived in its final form.

When Benjamin Franklin first saw a flight of the Montgolfiers' balloon someone asked, "But what is the use of it?"

He is said to have replied, "What is the use of a newborn infant?"

Electric cars are not new. The very first cars were electric.
Battery technology doubles capacity every 25 years of so. The failure rate on new battery technology is probably 100,000 attempts to one good one. Pretty dismal over the last 120 years. The failure rate is second only topped by apocalyptic predictions. Computers, batteries are not.
We get better at manufacturing them but there is a limit to electron exchange chemistry. Hi density energy like fossil fuels is unlikely without some type of nuclear involved.

CharlieO. said:

I'd raise the sail.

I actually did stumble across a sailboat today that has been converted to an electric drive motor. Claimed to get 2 hrs on battery power. Seemed like a reasonable set-up.

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My dockmate is doing the same. He is an electric car driving, vegan eating, anti-fossil fuel guy. He is deep into it. Not sure how it will work out. He has a Baba 32. Rather heavy boat with a full keel. We will see how far he gets. He always tried to sail in and out of his slip to avoid burning noxious heat trapping fuels. Sometimes he was successful. So, he does not expect to use the electric motor much. I just hope he can get past my boat without incident.

One of my slip neighbors has also gone electric on his sailboat. It's worked quite well for him as far as docking, etc. The only real limitation is limited motoring range (~25 nm in his case unless he adds more batteries). But as long as you plan around that and don't expect to motorsail or motor whenever the wind is a bit too light, it works. In his case, he had a dying diesel already, so he wanted to give it a try rather than rebuilding or replacing the diesel.

SteveK said:

Oh come on now. It is a Fad, either get on board or get out of the way.

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I should have used sarcasm font...

Along those "fad" lines: I still recall a boss back in the 80s that steadfastly refused to get a fax machine, as he said he wouldn't ever need one. Finally got one, proceeded to use and depend on it more than anyone. I'll bet he used that thing until no one else could even receive a fax anymore... :lol:

My genset starting battery is entirely separate from the rest of the system, just for that very purpose, as a starting safety net. In that situation, I would open the galley floor hatch, pull the genset battery, swap it with the one of the dead engine starting batteries, and fire it up. Probably starboard engine since that battery is easily accessible. Hopefully that Group 31 on the genset would have enough juice in it to start the engine (we don't run the gen very much to top off that gen battery consistently).

RickyD said:

My dockmate is doing the same. He is an electric car driving (recharged with power plants fired by coal), vegan eating (grown using fertilizer made from petroleum products) , anti-fossil fuel guy. He is deep into it. Not sure how it will work out. He has a Baba 32. Rather heavy boat with a full keel. We will see how far he gets. He always tried to sail in and out of his slip to avoid burning noxious heat trapping fuels. Sometimes he was successful. (and when he WASN'T successful, his boat was repaired using resins/cloth created using fossil fuels) So, he does not expect to use the electric motor much. I just hope he can get past my boat without incident.

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Not downplaying efforts to get away from fossil fuels, as I really agree that we need to get away from fossil fuels, but when people state "Green", they really REALLY should look at the entire life cycle of their energy/components of choice . . . .

When the 3rd world has caught up with the US, screw it.
We are expected to supply with world with wheat etc yet still reduce our pollution further.
The 3rd world better find a way to reduce their pollution without our help because we are busy correcting problems in our own backyards.
There is nothing political about that. It is a fact of life.

There is only 1 earth. We all live on it. We are all obligated to make it last as long as we can. We need to think about this in terms of discretionary income. If the US has the means to reduce the effects of man made climate change, how much of its resources should be devoted to that. Some say a lot, some say none. We can not compare ourselves to other countries who can't even afford to feed their citizens. Those countries that can help, should help. It is a matter of priorities. Does your country want to cut taxes, or save the planet ?

Sadly, every time a 3rd world marks starts to make at headway their birth rate jumps.
I am real tired of the dictators skimming money of the aid packages given

It must be the Christmas season when thoughts go to 3rd world needs.
I support sending food laced with birth controls to help them get their population under control.
Right after we solve our own homeless, our own hungry children problem.
Over 50 years we have seen on TV the hungry children of the children we helped a generation before.

OldDan1943 said:

Sadly, every time a 3rd world marks starts to make at headway their birth rate jumps.
I am real tired of the dictators skimming money of the aid packages given

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This is not an accurate statement. As '3rd World' countries improve their
standards of living the birth rate drops, just as it has done in all countries.

Sending food dosed with anything other than nutrients would only result in
the senders no longer being trusted, for good reason.

If you want countries to reduce their birth rate, the only known way is
to help them improve their standards of living and education.

Charity begins at home dreamer

L.A. Skid Row contains one of the largest stable populations (about 9,200–15,000) of homeless people in the United States and has been known for its condensed homeless population since at least the 1930s.

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jleonard said:

Harbor Freight jump pack.

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Oh yeah or just use the harbor freight combination electric cord/garden host and charge while you fill the water tanks!