The Guardian article glosses over a few things that are actually interesting about this ship:
- It's made out of aluminum instead of steel. The resulting weight savings make it a bit more efficient. That's something this shipping yard specializes in.
- Because it is going to run in shallow water on the river Plate, it doesn't actually have propellers but a water jet propulsion system.
The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well. It can't do it under its own power; it's designed for a ~50km crossing, not a trans Pacific/Atlantic journey. At the time, they were thinking tug boats.
I'd wager they will use what is known as a 'Float-on/float-off' ship for transport... it's rather common actually-
It's a ship with a very low deck line that partially submerges itself, with the center of the deck underwater deep enough so the other vessel can 'float on' over the deck. They they pump the water back out, raising the deck above water and the boat on top it just rests flat.
If it’s anything like the electric ferries that cross the Öresund beween Helsingborg and Helsingør, they grab charge while they’re unloading and loading at each terminal:
Each trip consumes approximately 1,175 kWh, which is nearly the same amount a residential home consumes in a month. In each port is a tower with a robot arm that connects the charging cable automatically every time the ship comes to the dock. The system charges 10.5 kV, 600Amp and 10.5MW. The batteries have a total capacity of 4,160 kWh, which means that we always have a surplus of electricity if for some reason we cannot load during a stop or if the transit takes more time than usual.
In Helsingör the ferries charge for approx. 6 minutes and in Helsingborg the ferries charge for approx. 9 minutes. This is enough to suffice for the journey across the strait.[1]
Side note: you can also charge your car on board from the boat’s batteries.
> The ship... will travel between the ports of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. The two cities are 60 kilometers apart, a distance it is expected to travel in 90 minutes.
> Direct-current charging stations will be installed at each port... A full charge is expected to take just 40 minutes.
> The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well.
Indeed. As I remarked last time (1) "it's long distance and can be rough seas" They get to pick a good time of year, but either route goes past places known for storms and shipwrecks in the winter (June to September). Would you choose to go via Cape Agulhas or around Cape Horn?
It would be annoying to be ready to deliver the ship, but due to schedule over-runs, to have to wait 4 months for the weather to improve.
apparently, 40MWh of capacity is enough to travel 40 nautical miles. The distance between Tasmania and South America is around 6,500–7,500 nautical miles.
It also needs to beat up that air enough to make the resultant forces overcome gravity acting on the airliner whereas the ship just gets to float there.
I've taken one of the electric roll-on/roll-off ferries that cross from Denmark to Sweden over the Øresund strait. Zero fumes, zero vibration, incredibly quiet. Awesome to see this tech being used for longer crossings.
I would like to know its price. Here in the Azores Islands there was a project to replace an ICE ferry with an electric one but they couldn't agree on the price with the boat builders. It went up to as much as 35 million Euros but it ended up being cancelled as that, apparently, wasn't enough for a ferry that can do 1-1.5 hour crossings with a dozen cars or so.
It should take around 50 hours to fully charge its batteries under ideal conditions. That is 5 - 10 days realistically. I guess it's impractical considering that it will ferry across the River Plate.
Any flat surface on a ship that is designed for electric should be covered in flexible solar panels.
Why do this if it can’t fully charge the ship? To offset the costs of charging the ship at port, to provide longer range by providing a lower voltage power source for 12V DC charging (cell phones, iPads, 5w LED lights).
So the commenter is correct, she needs panels and the fact that this isn’t part of the launch shows that they were more interested in being first than practical.
Weight won't matter much (you typically only accelerate it once, and the additional drag is small), it is just that the surface area is so small relative to what's needed that it just doesn't move the needle.
> It's made out of aluminum instead of steel. The resulting weight savings make it a bit more efficient. That's something this shipping yard specializes in.
According to that person, weight does indeed matter.
It's not a long range vessel, but it should have a fairly long service life.
Additional weight and complexity on a one off boat would be more expensive than a seperate much more standard solar and battery system on land. And you might be able to get additional value out of selling electricity from an oversized storage.
It's not sensible to draw your system boundaries around the boat by itself; there is significant terminal infrastructure; and even grid electrical infrastructure to consider.
> At least as long as a substantial percentage of total charge can come from the integrated solar
Yes, but that's highly doubtful. It doesn't work for EVs with panels on the car's roof - you don't get significant charge from it. It's far more practical to put the panels on a larger, fixed structure where the vehicles charges daily.
I’m not a sparky but would you need inverters if the panels are just for charging batteries? On the other hand, there is probably already inverters onboard to provide AC power to passenger power points.
No, you need some kind of DC converter to regulate voltage, but no inherent requirement to go to AC. Lots of small camping and off grid systems do that.
Although at the scale of a one off boat i would think it's cheaper to use the more widespread systems for bigger grid connected panel installations; so you are back to inverters.
The energy is not free, since the solar panels cost money and don't last forever. Even at optimistic prices, it's still something like 0.03 USD/kWh. Install them on a boat and they have to deal with constant vibrations, humid conditions, seagulls shitting all over them, etc etc etc.
I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
That may all be true, but there are other benefits that could make it worth it. For example it could be, in theory, self-sufficient forever if something else breaks down making it unable to maneuver. Then you can at least sit in the middle of the sea and have your heating and cooking and desalination working until you repair the propulsion.
Do you have solar panels on top of your head? If not why do you leave that space unused? Space being there is one of the worst possible reasons. That bloats designs and makes them expensive to build and maintain.
> The surface area of a standard car simply isn’t big enough to hold the sheer volume of solar panels that would be needed to capture a meaningful amount of energy from the sun.
Talk to a marine engineer about the overhead (equipment, training, emergency procedures, etc.) of adding a small-scale solar plant to all the things that they've already got to deal with on a ship.
And recall that this bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt... - will need a multi-billion dollar replacement, because the tiny engineering staff of a huge freighter could not diagnose and correct a surprise electrical failure. Within the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the initial fault, and when the collision became physically inevitable.
Does anyone have a feel for how heavy the weight of an equivalent oil(?) driven ship would be? It has the big number for the weight of batteries, but I've got nothing to compare against.
"In 2020, Buquebus originally commissioned Incat to deliver a new ship to use dual-fuel propulsion, capable of operating on liquefied natural gas and diesel, with around 400 tonne of main engines, 100 tonne gearboxes, 100 tonne cryogenic fuel tanks and 100 tonne fuel."
Spent a few months down in Hobart sussing out an antarctic science degree- really cool marine industry nexus down there with world leading research, all of the antarctic operations, and this stuff. Definitely the most nautical feeling city in Australia
The Guardian article glosses over a few things that are actually interesting about this ship:
- It's made out of aluminum instead of steel. The resulting weight savings make it a bit more efficient. That's something this shipping yard specializes in.
- Because it is going to run in shallow water on the river Plate, it doesn't actually have propellers but a water jet propulsion system.
Fully charged did a video on the construction of this ship early last year: https://fullycharged.show/episodes/electric-ferry-the-larges...
The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well. It can't do it under its own power; it's designed for a ~50km crossing, not a trans Pacific/Atlantic journey. At the time, they were thinking tug boats.
I'd wager they will use what is known as a 'Float-on/float-off' ship for transport... it's rather common actually-
It's a ship with a very low deck line that partially submerges itself, with the center of the deck underwater deep enough so the other vessel can 'float on' over the deck. They they pump the water back out, raising the deck above water and the boat on top it just rests flat.
They do this for some oil rigs as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_ship#Semi-submersib...
The relocation was the big question on my mind.
The other is: when will they charge? Does this ship not run at night?
If it’s anything like the electric ferries that cross the Öresund beween Helsingborg and Helsingør, they grab charge while they’re unloading and loading at each terminal:
Each trip consumes approximately 1,175 kWh, which is nearly the same amount a residential home consumes in a month. In each port is a tower with a robot arm that connects the charging cable automatically every time the ship comes to the dock. The system charges 10.5 kV, 600Amp and 10.5MW. The batteries have a total capacity of 4,160 kWh, which means that we always have a surplus of electricity if for some reason we cannot load during a stop or if the transit takes more time than usual.
In Helsingör the ferries charge for approx. 6 minutes and in Helsingborg the ferries charge for approx. 9 minutes. This is enough to suffice for the journey across the strait.[1]
Side note: you can also charge your car on board from the boat’s batteries.
[1] https://www.oresundslinjen.com/about-us/sustainability
10.5MW on demand is wild
Also: installing the charging infrastructure. Special docking requirements for the non electric Spirit Of Tasmania were a big problem.
Q:
> when will they charge?
A:
> The ship... will travel between the ports of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. The two cities are 60 kilometers apart, a distance it is expected to travel in 90 minutes.
> Direct-current charging stations will be installed at each port... A full charge is expected to take just 40 minutes.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-boat-battery-ship-ferry
> The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well.
Indeed. As I remarked last time (1) "it's long distance and can be rough seas" They get to pick a good time of year, but either route goes past places known for storms and shipwrecks in the winter (June to September). Would you choose to go via Cape Agulhas or around Cape Horn?
It would be annoying to be ready to deliver the ship, but due to schedule over-runs, to have to wait 4 months for the weather to improve.
1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844832
Thanks for the video link, it's way more informative than the original article.
Article quotes `40 megawatt-hours of installed capacity.` - Surely this can get you pretty far from Tasmania to South America.
apparently, 40MWh of capacity is enough to travel 40 nautical miles. The distance between Tasmania and South America is around 6,500–7,500 nautical miles.
I would be extremely surprised if the ship were designed to use 100% of its capacity in one way of its intended route.
For comparison, a wide body airliner needs ~0.15MWh to travel 1 nautical mile.
A wide body airliner doesn't carry "up to 2,100 passengers and 225 vehicles".
It also does so in a medium where the main drag force is induced by air rather than water, which is probably a comparably significant factor
It also needs to beat up that air enough to make the resultant forces overcome gravity acting on the airliner whereas the ship just gets to float there.
Apples to orages.
The drag on a vessel is orders of magnitude larger than the drag on a car.
I've taken one of the electric roll-on/roll-off ferries that cross from Denmark to Sweden over the Øresund strait. Zero fumes, zero vibration, incredibly quiet. Awesome to see this tech being used for longer crossings.
I would like to know its price. Here in the Azores Islands there was a project to replace an ICE ferry with an electric one but they couldn't agree on the price with the boat builders. It went up to as much as 35 million Euros but it ended up being cancelled as that, apparently, wasn't enough for a ferry that can do 1-1.5 hour crossings with a dozen cars or so.
As a comparison, in my banana country they spent €7.7m on a beat up old Greek ICE ferry that isn't even up to local safety standards[0].
Compared to that, €35m or so for a new modern vessel doesn't sound outrageous.
[0] https://www.morski.hr/jadrolinija-za-7-7-milijuna-eura-kupuj...
I hope that such a flat roof will be covered in solar
It should take around 50 hours to fully charge its batteries under ideal conditions. That is 5 - 10 days realistically. I guess it's impractical considering that it will ferry across the River Plate.
Any flat surface on a ship that is designed for electric should be covered in flexible solar panels.
Why do this if it can’t fully charge the ship? To offset the costs of charging the ship at port, to provide longer range by providing a lower voltage power source for 12V DC charging (cell phones, iPads, 5w LED lights).
So the commenter is correct, she needs panels and the fact that this isn’t part of the launch shows that they were more interested in being first than practical.
It’s possible adding panels could reduce the range because they’re heavy and so high up on the ship.
Weight won't matter much (you typically only accelerate it once, and the additional drag is small), it is just that the surface area is so small relative to what's needed that it just doesn't move the needle.
From the current top comment on this thread:
> It's made out of aluminum instead of steel. The resulting weight savings make it a bit more efficient. That's something this shipping yard specializes in.
According to that person, weight does indeed matter.
It's not a long range vessel, but it should have a fairly long service life.
Additional weight and complexity on a one off boat would be more expensive than a seperate much more standard solar and battery system on land. And you might be able to get additional value out of selling electricity from an oversized storage.
It's not sensible to draw your system boundaries around the boat by itself; there is significant terminal infrastructure; and even grid electrical infrastructure to consider.
If it can charge while sailing there is no downside. At least as long as a substantial percentage of total charge can come from the integrated solar.
> At least as long as a substantial percentage of total charge can come from the integrated solar
Yes, but that's highly doubtful. It doesn't work for EVs with panels on the car's roof - you don't get significant charge from it. It's far more practical to put the panels on a larger, fixed structure where the vehicles charges daily.
Sources e.g.
https://octopusev.com/ev-hub/why-dont-electric-cars-have-sol...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2022/11/30/why-doe...
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/ykwd89/w...
Probably more efficient to keep inverters, panels etc on land.
I’m not a sparky but would you need inverters if the panels are just for charging batteries? On the other hand, there is probably already inverters onboard to provide AC power to passenger power points.
No, you need some kind of DC converter to regulate voltage, but no inherent requirement to go to AC. Lots of small camping and off grid systems do that.
Although at the scale of a one off boat i would think it's cheaper to use the more widespread systems for bigger grid connected panel installations; so you are back to inverters.
You would be consuming fossil fuels to charge a ship when the sun is giving you energy for free.
At least capture some of that to charge some batteries or extend the length of your voyage.
The energy is not free, since the solar panels cost money and don't last forever. Even at optimistic prices, it's still something like 0.03 USD/kWh. Install them on a boat and they have to deal with constant vibrations, humid conditions, seagulls shitting all over them, etc etc etc.
I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
That may all be true, but there are other benefits that could make it worth it. For example it could be, in theory, self-sufficient forever if something else breaks down making it unable to maneuver. Then you can at least sit in the middle of the sea and have your heating and cooking and desalination working until you repair the propulsion.
You already have MWh of batteries for that.
Why don’t electric cars and trucks have solar panels then?
more efficient to leave surface unused?
More efficient to spend the same amount of money on shoreside panels with lower installation costs.
Do you have solar panels on top of your head? If not why do you leave that space unused? Space being there is one of the worst possible reasons. That bloats designs and makes them expensive to build and maintain.
Same reason EVs rarely have solar panels; adds weight and complexity, making it more expensive than putting the panels somewhere less wet and salty.
... and doesn't add significant charge.
> The surface area of a standard car simply isn’t big enough to hold the sheer volume of solar panels that would be needed to capture a meaningful amount of energy from the sun.
https://octopusev.com/ev-hub/why-dont-electric-cars-have-sol...
> there just isn’t enough space on top of cars to make a meaningful contribution to the charging needs of the battery
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2022/11/30/why-doe...
The same must be true of a ship.
Put the larger solar panel installations at the places where the vehicles charge.
Talk to a marine engineer about the overhead (equipment, training, emergency procedures, etc.) of adding a small-scale solar plant to all the things that they've already got to deal with on a ship.
And recall that this bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt... - will need a multi-billion dollar replacement, because the tiny engineering staff of a huge freighter could not diagnose and correct a surprise electrical failure. Within the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the initial fault, and when the collision became physically inevitable.
Does anyone have a feel for how heavy the weight of an equivalent oil(?) driven ship would be? It has the big number for the weight of batteries, but I've got nothing to compare against.
700-ish tonnes - it's in the wikipedia article:
"In 2020, Buquebus originally commissioned Incat to deliver a new ship to use dual-fuel propulsion, capable of operating on liquefied natural gas and diesel, with around 400 tonne of main engines, 100 tonne gearboxes, 100 tonne cryogenic fuel tanks and 100 tonne fuel."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Zorrilla_(ship)
Google supplied me with this original spec: https://incat.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Mini-Spec-13...
Same ship, originally specced to carry tens of thousands of liters of oil. No overall displacement number, oddly.
Previously, 55 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844832
Discussion on a different article, about the same boat.
250 tonnes of batteries…
Spent a few months down in Hobart sussing out an antarctic science degree- really cool marine industry nexus down there with world leading research, all of the antarctic operations, and this stuff. Definitely the most nautical feeling city in Australia
Ugly as hell as far as ships go. Ugly as hell like almost all new cars, trains and buildings.