Electric Ships

[NJLochness]

They should have charging stations in the middle of the ocean like they charge the electric cars.

[NJLochness]

9 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

What is your proposal to generate the electricity to drive the ships?  Remember the ship has to be self sufficient as most of the third world countries cruise ships visit will not have the infrastructure to support the ship. 

That’s X’s job to figure it out. I’m not going to help them out.They get the big bucks.

[cgolf1]

4 minutes ago, NJLochness said:

That’s X’s job to figure it out. I’m not going to help them out.They get the big bucks.

 

I hope you do realize that materials to make batteries need to be mined, etc. There is a real problem without a lot of sustainable answers. If you are curious look up how they discard wind turbine blades.

 

On the ship recently the captain talked of a few different options for much cleaner burning fuels. There would never be a nuclear powered cruise ship, but that would be very clean.

[Ex-Airbalancer]

1 hour ago, DaKahuna said:

All electricity used on the ship originates from the fossil fuel burning engines on the ship.  Pretty much the same way the electricity in your house and that used to re-charge EV vehicles originates from some form of carbon based fuel, unless you are lucky enough to live in a state / location where the environmentalist has not caused the shutdown of nuclear power plants. 

 

Which means most of Canada 😁

[Ex-Airbalancer]

The future 

https://www.ship-technology.com/news/fincantieri-hydrogen-cruise-ships-msc/

[mayleeman]

Forget batteries. Install a grid of electrical wires above the entire ocean and have the ships work like electric trolleys of old with a rod raised to touch the wires. 

 

Or make the bottom 2 decks a gym with hundreds of paddle boats or stationary bikes powering a generator like Gilligan. (Oars only could fit on the shell, but could be used as a supplement.)

Edited March 9, 2023 by mayleeman

[NutsAboutGolf]

1 hour ago, Ex-Airbalancer said:

The future 

https://www.ship-technology.com/news/fincantieri-hydrogen-cruise-ships-msc/

 

LNG Propulsion, yes...Small hydrogen fuel cell for "low emissions hotel operations", probably not; I would imagine some port(s) in specific locations must be subsidizing hydrogen because it's more expensive than diesel or LNG

[4774Papa]

Some Navy ships of other countries have diesel submarines that can switch to electric battery propulsion when they need to be silent.  However, there is a limit on how long they can do this.

 

 

[wrk2cruise]

5 minutes ago, 4774Papa said:

Some Navy ships of other countries have diesel submarines that can switch to electric battery propulsion when they need to be silent.  However, there is a limit on how long they can do this.

 

 

 

See post #15 for a cruise ship that does exactly the same.

[Shiba_Lover]

1 hour ago, mayleeman said:

Or make the bottom 2 decks a gym with hundreds of paddle boats or stationary bikes powering a generator like Gilligan. (Oars only could fit on the shell, but could be used as a supplement.)

If we passengers powered the ship we could work off all our desserts.  This is the best idea yet!😁

[CGTNORMANDIE]

9 hours ago, NJLochness said:

Celebrity seems to be worried about the climate so why are they not using electric ships?

And how would you charge those gargantuan batteries?  

[NutsAboutGolf]

I'll attempt to bring some value...Full electric boats are deployed already; full electric platoon boats have been around for a decade.  There are perhaps a dozen electric boat (usually yachts) dealers who have sold electric (often with solar) vessels.

 

Here's the list of current COMMERICAL deployed vessels (more in the pipeline), 15 boats/ships and 1 sub.

 

[DaKahuna]

 

 That's interesting.  Glad to see technology being put to good use.  Unfortunately, All of these have limited capacity and sailing distances/durations.  100 Kilometers for the Asahi Tanker e5, 30 hours for the Port-Liners, etc. and I just don't see cruise lines living within those limitations. 

 

[mnocket]

It's really disingenuous imho to talk about "electric powered" anything - cars, ships, bikes, homes, etc.  Electricity isn't providing the power, the power is coming from somewhere else. A Tesla isn't powered by electricity - it may be solar powered or wind powered, but it's more likely to be fossil fuel powered - at least for now.  Similarly, most cruise ships are already "electric", but they are powered by diesel fuel. 

[Orator]

At least this thread has caused some to look at alternative power for cruise ships. 

[MobiusHky]

22 hours ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

We're just not there with full electric yet as the cost/mass/weight equation doesn't make sense...The next evolution will most likely be all new ships:

 

LNG, much much much cleaner cradle to grave as cruise ship can last for fifty years even if the original owner sell it

 

Shore power, which is a bit of a wildcard because it obviously won't work in a tender port, very few ports have it at the moment, if a port does have shore power it may not be installed on all berths and for most ports, they'd charge the ship for the power so if the rate is too high, ships won't take advantage of it

 

Bonus, solar panels on ships are a bit tricky for cruise ships as the cruise lines feel covering the say the whole top deck with panels isn't attractive to most.  Additionally in order to receive descent power output, the panels have to face the sun at a certain angle so ideally you'd want the panels on a swiveling/rotating mount which many wouldn't find attractive 

Obviously there isn't a need to fully power any electrical system with the complete demand of the entire system.  However, when designing said system the generation capability of that system must account for the possibility.  That said, I recently watched a documentary on an MSC cruise ship where they stated that the diesel engine/generators were capable of outputting 80megawatts at peak load.  I couldn't find a PV installation that matched that, but the Bohoff Solar Park in Africa is 60megawatts of output.  That facility encompass a total footprint of 16,793,858 square feet.  If a cruise ship is roughly 100ft wide, it would have to be nearly 168,000 feet long.  OR if you use the same proportions as a modern cruise ship roughly...  It would need to carry a hat on it that was 7,875 ft by 1,004 ft above the ship.  Effectively the cover would need to be more than a mile long.

[NutsAboutGolf]

11 minutes ago, MobiusHky said:

Obviously there isn't a need to fully power any electrical system with the complete demand of the entire system.  However, when designing said system the generation capability of that system must account for the possibility.  That said, I recently watched a documentary on an MSC cruise ship where they stated that the diesel engine/generators were capable of outputting 80megawatts at peak load.  I couldn't find a PV installation that matched that, but the Bohoff Solar Park in Africa is 60megawatts of output.  That facility encompass a total footprint of 16,793,858 square feet.  If a cruise ship is roughly 100ft wide, it would have to be nearly 168,000 feet long.  OR if you use the same proportions as a modern cruise ship roughly...  It would need to carry a hat on it that was 7,875 ft by 1,004 ft above the ship.  Effectively the cover would need to be more than a mile long.

 

As I did state in the post I quoted, I didn't think attempting to make ship run 100% off of PV made much sense however Silent yacht has made catamarans that do just that.  Also, they do make larger solar farms

 

 

[Mark_K]

Forget batteries, extension cords, sails, etc., it’s time to go nuclear.  An aircraft carrier can go 20 years on one “charge”.  

[MobiusHky]

1 minute ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

 

As I did state in the post I quoted, I didn't think attempting to make ship run 100% off of PV made much sense however Silent yacht has made catamarans that do just that.  Also, they do make larger solar farms

 

 

For non-static vessels (vehicles and boats), it's a matter of scale.  PV does not scale well as the size/demand of the vessel grows.  It's not linear.  Small vessel PV may be reasonable, large vessel rapidly becomes infeasible.  The Silent Yachts do have gas generators like an RV.  You don't have to use them, but you might when you use a higher demand.

 

I wasn't looking for the largest PV site in the world.  I was looking for something closer to 80MW.  I'm aware they have made larger.  The Bhadla site has a footprint of ~14,000 acres or 609,840,000 square feet.  By comparison, Diablo Canyon Nuclear occupies ~750 acres or 32,670,00 square feet with roughly the same output capacity.  A ratio of 271,644 sqft (~6.25 acres) per MW for solar compared to 14,850 sqft (~0.35 acres) per MW for nuclear or more than 18 times the footprint.  Coal plants have an energy density of about double nuclear, give or take.  My point was that PV is an extremely low density per square foot energy.  The lowest in fact.  Meaning that any increase in demand carries a stiff real estate penalty that becomes impossible to overcome very quickly.

[markeb]

39 minutes ago, Mark_K said:

Forget batteries, extension cords, sails, etc., it’s time to go nuclear.  An aircraft carrier can go 20 years on one “charge”.  

 

Actually, you just need some dilithium crystals to control the matter-antimatter reactions. And maybe a crazy engineer from somewhere in the Scottish highlands...

[kguerriero]

For anyone else whose interest is piqued, Hurtigruten is probably making the most strides forward for "sustainable" cruising, and have launched a few hybrid electric-diesel ships which are pretty neat. They currently have a partnership the Volvo Penta (boating and marine operations) for further development of batteries for ship usage.

https://sea-technology.com/hurtigruten-green-ship

 

https://www.volvopenta.com/about-us/news-page/2022/may/first-of-its-kind-hybrid-electric-vessel-enters-operation-for-svalbard-tours/

 

Cruising is absolutely not eco-friendly at all right now, no matter how much food gets cut from the buffet, so it's nice to see some innovation, even in the early stages. Most modern cruise ships use a cheap, less-refined "dark fuel" which creates more pollution than the diesel and gasoline used in road vehicles. There's been lots of back-patting for installing "scrubbers" that supposedly clean emissions, but all those do is prevent the burn-off from entering the air, and instead ends up in the ocean, so not great for marine life. 

Liquified Natural Gas is coming online as a serious fuel alternative, and Carnival Corp has been a good leader in getting adoption going to the point that RCL is catching up with some new ships. It's still a fossil fuel, but again, it's a much-needed improvement, and critical if the industry wants to stay relevant with younger people.

[jean87510]

On 3/9/2023 at 3:18 PM, NJLochness said:

GolfNuts:  this is a very interesting topic.I do make sense in whatever I say.I’m trying to save the planet with new ideas.

You do know where the source comes from to charge the electric vehicles, correct?  Same source that charges your cell phone and laptop.