Guest Posted August 6, 2012 Share Posted August 6, 2012 http://vimeo.com/40095422 I like lateral thinking. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted August 6, 2012 Share Posted August 6, 2012 Might have to wait for the cheap chinese versions of these lightweight solar panels. 125 watt is $1200 or so. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted August 6, 2012 Share Posted August 6, 2012 Sure, that is a consideration. The other plus is that you can walk on these panels, so placed on the deck then becomes possible. Also, they don't drop the power output if a shadow is cast on them like the rigid panels do. So yes, they do have many positives. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted August 9, 2012 Share Posted August 9, 2012 I guess a good place to place the flexible panels would be on the topsides. When she's heeled or early or late would be good. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 I was down in Taupo over the weekend and had a chat to the Owner of Barbary - the old charter Ketch I always admired as a kid. Its now totally electric drive - perfect for a tourism operator, absolutely silent and he can keep to schedule in the light or the chop by just having the prop turning over to give an extra push but no noise. 1.6 T of batteries though :-/ Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 Neat EE, Thats what i'm thinking. But A hybrid system, a pulley on the prop shaft with an electric motor. When its ICE is running we will be reaping oodles of current. Then when sailing we can feed in just a bit of current to help us along a wee bit, at least take the drag off the prop. We should be able to motor just on solar power to 2 knots or so of help to the sails. Regeneration from the prop is a myth unless speed is upwards of 7 knots. Might get 100 watts or so. I think its worthwhile considering this type of system in a cruising yacht the benefits as I see them are.... Quiet motivation A great generator onboard Reap solar and wind power when its available and store it for when you need. Because you can charge the batteries quickly only a relatively small bank is needed. Not expensive to set up, say $2000 for the E motor and bits, $2000 for 200 amp hours at 48 volts. Won't need to run the engine as much so save on fuel and maintenance. In mine adds 200 kg which is 5mm lower in the water. Won't need as much diesel onboard. Can power 240 volt appliances, even air conditioning. No need to be constantly miserly with power Ummmmmmm Should go for 8 hours at 4 knots! Link to post Share on other sites
Jon 360 Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 bbay just realize that the losses through belts are large. About 30% from memory but I'm sure Wheels will correct me. So using your electric motor to both charge then drive your losses will be really big. Best way is direct drive onto shaft with electric motor the a ICE somewhere that you use for charging or an electric motor with a tail shaft inline maybe ? Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 Thanks Danaid, I was thinking a multiple belt arrangement or a toothed belt like on my Ducati heads. These are a proven concept, check out Electric Yacht. I have this email from Mike Gunning, Electric Yacht dealer..... Pete, Disclosure: Dealer for Electric Yacht Just finished our third trip with our diesel hybrid and I am really sold on the capabilities of the parallel diesel hybrid. I also have an all electric Newport 30MKll. My Columbia 9.6 is quite a bit lighter than your 32ft double ender. What we have found in sailing her is that when others sailboats around Southern California are under power on the upwind portion of a passage, we are sailing at about 60-70% of hull speed. Just a little slower but the journey is the destination. Just that little but of boost, 4 to 10 amps sailing assist makes it possible. Solar would be useful here. That fact has become the over ridding way I use electric on the boat. In Southern California light winds passage making my use has been: diesel propulsion/charging 25%, Electric sailing assist 50% and sailing only 25%. Electric only in day sailing and harbor use. We installed the WE7.0 on our 15 hp Yanmar and could have installed the smaller WE3.0 with much of the same results. The electric motor is mounted above the transmission with drive to the special geared common coupler. The diesel moves the boat, the electric moves the boat and the diesel while propelling the boat can drive the electric as a generator. The clutch would be very nice and it is in the future, shaft space already reserved for it. We use the same belt system we have installed in over 150 boats and it is quite and reliable. Chain would also work but likely more noise. The recharge system is turned on or off by the switch and the controller manages the amount of power the diesel driving the generator puts into the battery pack. You can see the installation here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electricb ... 0/pic/list Your thinking about how you would use the hybrid is spot on. After making our third trip this Summer, I believe that for the 32 to 40 foot boat, the parallel hybrid is a good solution. The diesel systems are usually adequate and can handle the power load of the electric in generator mode (they are programed to not over demand power from the diesel while the diesel is pushing the boat). The benefit of the slow speed harbor under electric only is great. The sailing with electric motor assist is very useful to improve pointing and increase speed in light winds. And the size of the propulsion battery pack is likely to be smaller than in an electric only propulsion system without an installed diesel generator. Regards, Mike Gunning Electric Yacht of Southern California Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 Correct, there is significant loss in using belts, although it varies with what type of belt(flat toothed, V-belt, toothed V-belt, A section B section blah blah blah) and the diameter it has to turn around. Direct driving anything is always the least loss of energy. the easiest way to think of it is that every time you have to change energy, (in this case from belt to pulley and from pulley back to belt) there is always a loss. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 So my Ducatis valve timing is incorrect? Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 No no, it's that a certain amount of power is lost in driving the belt and pulley's. In other words, Friction. The loss can be felt as heat of course. A belt grips a pulley via Friction, but there is a very small amount of slip, which causes heat and the bending of the belt means the very fibres themselves that make up the belt move against themselves, so take effort to bend and results in more heat. A toothed belt is better because the teeth stop the belt from slipping, thus reducing friction and the belt is much thinner, so it takes less effort to bend it around the pulley. By the way, the exact same thing happens with lines around pulleys. For every pulley you run a line around, a certain amount of the effort you apply to pulling that line is lost in the line running around the pulley sheave and in bending that line around the sheave. With really big lines under extreme loads, that heat can be high enough to start fusing fibres together and cause failure of the line due to the heat build up. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 From an owner with electric drive A designer of boats I know and respect recently pointed out that electric propulsion does not make any sense. Her reasoning runs along the lines of "I tried it and it did not work like I thought it should so it simply does not work"... On the other hand, I know a number of people using electric propulsion who have systems that work just fine and are very happy campers. Something of a conundrum that! As it happens, this is not really about electric motors on boats but about how expectations or how you embrace something tends to affect the outcome... Electric propulsion just happens to be a good example. The thing is, ideas that are a little outside the box require a little outside-the-box-thought-process to actually work. From where I sit, this seems like a foregone conclusion but every day I see examples that tell me my thinking is way off base. Electric propulsion is sorta/kinda different than internal combustion based propulsion systems and as a result you sorta/kinda have to approach it a little differently. If you approach it the same as internal combustion you're in for some serious disappointment because it's different... In a sorta/kinda way. Different, apparently, is difficult for a lot of people to deal with. Most folk like the same old same because the it's the same and they don't have to do anything hard like modify their thought process, change how they do things, or swim upstream against popular opinion. I mention this as something to keep in mind as it might come in handy in the not too far distant future. You might want to look around you and see just how some folks are being successful outside the box... That cruiser who seems happy sailing on a miniscule budget you can't even imagine living on, or that guy about to build a proa, the couple on a junk rigged schooner, and yes, those folks who seem to be able to manage on a boat without an internal combustion engine. They might actually be on to something! David Bowie certainly said it better than I ever could... "Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes Turn and face the strange..." Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 Sailing faster, quietly assisted by the electric drive giving an extra knot or two in light conditions. Superb! Quietly reaping sunshine and storing in huge battery banks while sunbathing surfing or skin diving. Superb! Getting your moneys worth in a marina berth. Superb! Not having to wrestle the gearbox, do oil changes, pay engineers and mechanics. Superb! Clean tidy engine room without noise or a sniff of diesel. Superb! The way I see it the pluses are huge and the negatives I could live with. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 Sailing faster, quietly assisted by the electric drive giving an extra knot or two in light conditions. Superb! Fit a feathering prop. The rest is all very nice, but you have to weigh up complexity, performance and of course the Cost, over a long term. Electric sounds simple, but it is far from it. It sounds cheap, but it is far from it. And as far as performance goes, it is far from what you can achieve with a small simple diesel. Having said all that and in reply to Squids comments above, the Author saying ("I tried it and it did not work like I thought it should so it simply does not work"...) is at the other extreme. Because in some situations, going electric can be a big benefit. OK, an extreme case here, but a Submarine for instance. In other words, there are times when alternative systems can be the better or best choice. For a Cruising Sailboat, the key elements would have to be Simplicity. You never know when or where you may have to fix something. That encompasses parts availability and technical availability. With Diesel installations, somewhere someone maybe able to use the No.8 wire and some twine and get a boat limping into port. Sophisticated electronics don't much like No.8 wire and twine tends to be rather useless. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 Rather a idealistic view, I think Wheels of the diesel engine. Electric is reliable as, the actual engine that is . The electronics that control the motor might be a concern but surely they could be simply wired around in an emergency! I believe some carry spares of these parts because the cost is not prohibitive, even spare motors! Besides its a sailboat, well mine is, and sailing what I'll be trying to do most of the time. Most diesels rely on electric motors to get them going! Calling diesels simple is a bit out there Wheels, I see it as a very complex system. But I'm still gearbox wrastlin. Just put it back together with new clutches , bearings and seals. Fired it up and wo no go so today will pull it apart again. There's a tube that runs from the sump to the oil pump and I must have knocked it out of place. I've check everything else, took all day yesterday, and its the only thing left. The mechanicals are spot on, every thing fitted back together well. These PRM gearboxes are nicely designed and made and Thanks to James and Terry at Moon Engineering for advice. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 The people who have already gone electric report years of near zero maintenance use. As above most of the fiddly bits are cheap enough to carry a complete set of spares. From a guy in the Caribbean: Saturday, July 28, 2012 Let's put an electric drive maritime myth down... More than time to face up to some problems, who says there's no voter fraud (but you might want to check out the voting while dead culprit), and George R. R. Martin makes a point... I had a couple of readers who took exception with my pointing out the other day that electric propulsion works out at being quite a bit less expensive in a repair/replacement situation... Sadly, the maritime myth of electric propulsion being MORE expensive than ICE just won't go away. The thing to keep in mind is that electric propulsion is a very simple system and there is very little to go wrong. You could fry the motor, destroy the controller, have a belt fail, or if really talented in the mayhem department, you could rip the throttle off and destroy it in the process. Not a lot to go wrong but, just in case, here are some numbers for the system on "So It Goes" (an Electric Yacht drive if anyone is interested)... The most likely repair, a stretched or broken belt, would cost you somewhere south of $25. Not a lot of money (and I really should buy an extra one for just in case). A replacement motor would cost between $600-$800 and is small and light enough to actually consider buying one as a spare. The brain of the system is the controller and a replacement would run around $800. Just for the record, we do have a spare controller as it is the one part we'd expect to find difficult to get repaired or replace in the boonies. The throttle is just a potentiometer so replacement is anywhere from a couple of dollars to around $100 for something that looks like what we expect a boat throttle to look like. Those are replacement costs and as most of these items can actually be repaired, repair costs could be quite a lot less... So, even if we had to replace ALL of the various parts of our system that could go wrong, we'd only be out of pocket (by my calculation) somewhere around $1630 which, I think you'll all agree, is quite a bit less than replacing all the major bits on an ICE system. I really should also point out that an engine-less cruiser does not have to worry at all about the cost of replacing systems or repairs which might be something to keep in mind. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 As I said, it all depends, in some situations, Electric may well be a good choice. You won't get someone more interested in alternatives than me. I am highly qualified in electronics/electrical remember. Remember to compare apples to apples. Or Hp to Hp. And that needs to be Shp to Shp (Shaft Horse power) that is. That is the power reaching the prop and pushing you through the water. For small boats, electric can have a big advantage, because you don't need a lot of power and the weight saving can be significant in the boats performance. For a Cruising boat, that is different. You need a lot more Hp. Although that is dependent on boat design as well. Electric in small installations can be cheap'ish, but as you go up in power, the cost and the complexity starts to go up dramatically also. For the prices suggested in Squids post to be compared, we are talking some small'ish equipment and also that has to be US dollars. You could easily increase those prices by 3x here in NZ. They have also left out the charger and the batteries, which tend to be big ticket items. And to say that such electric systems are reliable, well...... ask yourself why there are so many Auto Electricians about. You may of course go for a lifetime with no issues. but it can and does happen. So you then have to ask, can I get this repaired easily anywhere in the world. If you think your Diesel engine is complicated, then you need to do a basic course and get better aquainted with your engine. Sure things can go wrong with them as well. But think how many hrs yours has done bbay. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oar no solar, no recharge, no limited runtime, full water immersion fine, weight negligible, wont break the bank to buy or burn ya boat down, will equal a reasonable gym workout very simple to maintain (yes you can paintem pink if it rocksya) and definetly better at repelling borders, pushing off from large rocks and waving about at dinghy loads of oicks about to invade (known to save rum used in this fashion) can also be incorporated into the rig to poke things about and hold sails out etc Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 No good to me L4 as the wife refuses to row if I'm aboard. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Hmmmm, so how about a motor that has two mechanical arms that row the oars. Link to post Share on other sites
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