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THIS, but even more so. Electric ships sound cool, but shipping is giga-scale global infrastructure. The mines, battery factories, electric motors, dockside equipment, etc. needed to do this at scale don't exist. If they did, the national power grids sitting behind most major ports could not reliably take the additional load.

So, yes, start small. As in: "Here is one self-contained, mostly self-managing battery, inside one cargo container. We'll modify the electrical system on one ship, so that this battery can connect to it, and looks (electrically, and to the ship's control systems) like one extra generator in the engine room. Once we see how well that works, and fix round 1 of bugs and crew training issues, then we'll try to scale up to 10 ships."

Barring internal labor politics, infrastructure immediately near docks and rail shouldn't be an issue to upgrade as the sheer scale of modern cargo vehicles means you could get all the resources for such in a single load.

Also I believe most ships are "hybrids" anyway, in that their props are driven by motors directly connected to generators on their engines, since when you are dealing with engines that are literally two stories tall creating a matching gearbox becomes quite difficult. As such the biggest pain point will be battery capacity, but if we are willing to forgo the logistical difficulties of super-massive ships can be brute-forced with lower quality batteries in even more massive ships.

While trains are typically hybrids like that, I don’t think ships are.

So they’re optimized for cruise and horribly inefficient while accelerating or decelerating. But it’s a propeller in water so it just spins inoptimally which isn’t as bad as a steel wheel doing the same.

Maybe we could build out the ships, the battery factories, the dockside equipment, the new generation capacity and the grid upgrades at the same time?

Is it really a problem that the dockside equipment doesn't exist if the electric boats don't exist either?

We'll all feel foolish if we turn round in the year 2050 with a global fleet of electric container ships ready to go and then we start arguing about who was supposed to build the sockets to plug them in.

Perhaps...in an ideal world, with a centrally planned economy, and extremely powerful central authority. OTOH, recent history suggests that centrally planned economies don't work all that well, especially when they attempt complex "great leap forward" projects.

The reality is that global shipping is controlled by huge patchwork of corporations, political authorities, etc. Most of them very focused on the short-term. And greedy for money, power, & political benefits. Similar for the national power grids, mining industry, battery industry, ...

California can’t even build a train that’s useful without blowing obscene amounts of money.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2020/02/26/californ...

Big things cost a lot of money. I expect better arguments than "$X billion is a lot of money" and "theyre only doing it to spite Trump" if someone wants to argue against a big infrastructure project.

Rail is a good and useful thing. The USA should probably have more of it. I have no real knowledge about this specific project, but my priors are that any "crazy", "green" project from California is perfectly fine, sensible governance that is probably saving lives, the environment and money, and that the people screaming about it don't know what they are talking about.

But I'm open to credible info to the contrary.

(A quick glance at Wikipedia tells me that the people of California think it's a good idea, and that the people who don't are generally older and republican leaning, which pretty much meshes with my priors, so I'm fairly confident it's a good thing overall).

California HSR is projected to cost $100B for 500 miles. That’s $200M/mile.

By comparison, the 160 mile LGV Méditerranée in France cost €3.8B in 2001 [0]. That’s roughly €25M/mile. Even after accounting for exchange rates and inflation, that’s still roughly an order of magnitude cheaper.

Yes, big things cost a lot of money, but they shouldn’t cost 10x more what they cost in other industrialized countries. High speed rail is great, but it should not be funded with a blank check.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Méditerranée

I glanced at Wikipedia earlier to learn about the California project and they claim that despite costing x2 or x3 what similar European and Chinese efforts cost, that's mostly due to the cost of land and 3 mountain ranges being in the way.

It also mentions that it's costing less per mile than HS2 in London. So if this is extravagant waste, it's not that extravagant.

>I glanced at Wikipedia earlier to learn about the California project and they claim that despite costing x2 or x3 what similar European and Chinese efforts cost

This is based on an outdated cost estimate that's roughly 2x lower than the current projected cost. From Wikipedia:

>In July 2014, The World Bank reported that the per kilometer cost of California's high-speed rail system was $56 million, more than double the average cost of $17–21 million per km of high speed rail in China and more than the $25–39 million per km average for similar projects in Europe at the time.

That was in 2014. Costs have ballooned 2x to $125M/km; this has not happened in Europe or China.

>the cost of land and 3 mountain ranges being in the way

If you want to control for mountain ranges, consider the Suseo–Pyeongtaek branch of Korea's high speed rail network, opened in 2016. It's a 38 mile line, 31 of which are in a 50 meter deep tunnel. It cost ₩4.18T (approximately $3.2B), which comes out to ~$85M per mile. Again, 80% of the line is in a 50 meter deep tunnel.

That's still less than half the cost per mile of California HSR, which will not be 80% underground. There is simply no excuse for the inflated costs of CHSR.

>It also mentions that it's costing less per mile than HS2 in London. So if this is extravagant waste, it's not that extravagant.

HS2 is notorious for being a boondoggle with massive cost overruns. Not exactly a flattering thing to compare to.

HS2 seems to be similalry rated as "expensive but probably worth it overall", so if its still less than that it seems okay.

I'm not looking for perfection in big projects, but I am looking for vaguely informed comment.

By this logic we shouldn’t question how much we spend for anything.

Florida is connecting Miami, Ft Lauderdale, and Orlando this year for a total cost of $3-4 billion. That’s $7.3 million per mile, and it was mostly paid for by private enterprise instead of the government. Development started in 2012, with Miami to West Palm Beach opening in 2018. CHSR started development in 2008, and isn’t slated to operate anything until 2029. When it does operate, it’ll link Merced and Bakersfield.

Florida will be operating the fastest trains in the US this year.

This thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline

That's not a high speed service. There _was_ a planned high-speed service with a similar route (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_High-Speed_Corridor), but it was killed.

Conventional rail is, of course, a lot cheaper than high-speed rail; this isn't a revelation.

It's also a one train per hour service. CHSR:

> In addition, the achievable operating headway between successive trains must be less than 5 minutes

While CHSR _is_ definitely on the expensive side for high speed rail, it's a little silly to compare it to the Florida system, which is a fairly standard intercity rail.

Incidentally, I'm not saying there's anything _wrong_ with the Florida system; I've no idea of the background, but it may be that the expected ridership didn't justify a high-speed high frequency system. It's very much not comparing like for like, though.

I wonder though.

I live on a dirt road, out in the country. It was built by a contractor, who was selling farmland for housing, 50 years ago.

Instead of digging down, putting aggregate(gravel, etc), the road was just laid over farmland, with a foot of gravel.

Once the municipality took over, it was fine for a while, but maintenance costs were through the roof. Springtime flooding, washouts, and heavy trucks woild sink (no drainage, mud) in the spring.

Eventually, the municipality had to dig down 4ft, put in proper drainage and gravel base, to reduce failure and ongoing maintenance costs.

(I'm in Canada, and frost/snow/ice creates loads of maintenance, especally without drainage.. a southern American in Arizona might wonder what the big deal is)

Anyhow, now there are laws for road quality and developers here, 50 years later, bit I wonder....

Could that private rail developer be shifting initial cost, to higher maintenance costs?

And further, mountains have issues with freezing/etc, and it does make a massive diff...

> The least efficient part of any ship is turning mechanical energy into electrical

Electrical generators can reach 90+% efficiency at turning mechanical energy into electricity. Did you mean to claim turning chemical energy into electrical?

No, I meant chemical to mechanical to electrical is inefficient.

Good idea. There are these containerized iron salt batteries now that energy companies use to help with renewable energy storage (or at least plan to). Maybe loading a few of those instead of cargo containers could already take care of most of a ships electricity needs - and for recharging you can just load/unload them anywhere like regular containers.

Article with an image:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1046365/grid-sto...

Yeah exactly, just think of the ship as an electric grid and the container interties into it.

Hybrids, as with cars, provide the most benefit when you can run the engine at its sweet spot more often.

I believe some cargo ships have had relatively tiny batteries for a long time, for port maneuvering where the engine is throttled way down. To prevent pollution they now often are forced to plug in when in port too. So I'd guess this is already just going to happen as battery costs reduce and pollution controls and costs rise, but maybe won't have a big impact on long voyages, though every little bit helps.

The other big play in this space is green ammonia, but similarly early moves are to just burn it in modified diesel engines. Longer term they can electrify with fuel cells.

And obviously those two can work together as Fuel Cell vehicles are basically hybrids with the same drive trains as electric vehicles, just smaller batteries.

Ships run at constant power for entire journey, there is no occasion to store energy for later.

It only works with cars because we constantly slow down and speed up. The battery helps to smooth out the output of the engine. Cargo ships already have the output as smooth as possible, hence hybrid model makes no sense.

A generator or an electric motor don't have a particularly low efficiency or don't wear much? Hybrids happened in locomotives and ships way before cars. Many ships have diesel engines turning generators and then have electric motor propulsion.

You can replace all 23 MW (consisting of 20 MW propulsion and 3 MW electrical) on one ship with batteries + propulsion motor.

Or you can replace just the 3 MW pure electric part with batteries, getting rid of the auxiliary motors and their generators, doing it on 8 ships.

In the latter case you don't need the one propulsion motor, that's true, so it might be somewhat better.

> Hybrids happened in locomotives and ships way before cars.

For locomotives: diesel locomotives were diesel-electric from the start, because conventional clutches were unable to cope with the requirements of getting a train to start. Diesel-hydraulic locomotives were a German post-war specialty, sadly the Wikipedia article doesn't say why [1].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesellokomotive

I would start with smaller ships and shorter distances and build from there.

https://zeroemissionservices.nl/en/homepage/ seems to work for short distance inland shipping (‘seems’ to because from what I can tell, they only have a single customer with a single ship, making it more like a demonstrator)

Meanwhile, users buy the kit, convert, get tired of charging and also gassing up, so connect an inverter to an alternator and charge up that way.

"But I'm helping the environment!", they say.

Edit: just realised this may seem snarky. It is just that sometimes, this is the end result I expect, regardless of legit effort to help things.

I feel the same about some plug-in hybrids like the “ Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid gets 18 mpg combined in hybrid mode and has 14 miles of range in EV mode.”

But it qualifies for tax credit and HOV lanes while in single occupancy.

>The least efficient part of any ship is turning mechanical energy into electrical

I think you meant "most".

The least efficient step is converting chemical energy into mechanical energy.

Given the cheapness of fuel oil and geneator sets, and the expense of batteries, what possible financial argument is there for doing this?

Fuel oil is an expensive way of generating electricity, which is why few on-land power plants use it.

This is all about utilizing efficient grid power (hydro, nuclear, gas, whatever) on a ship. By grid-intertie at the ship level, re-fit costs are minimized. Kinda like rooftop solar.

Fuel oil is a very cheap way of generating power, when you have several thousand tons of it already on your ship :)

The possible few percantage difference in efficiency between ship-based oil-powered generation, and land-based power generation, is more than wiped out by the storage and conversion losses of a battery-based system. It's also very expensive (and heavy). Why pay to fill a container with batteries, and then pay more to charge them, when you can be paid to carry a container of other stuff as cargo?

Crude oil is about 3% of global electricity production and continues falling. And the efficiency is particularly bad when you’re using it in a reciprocating engine (as on a ship) instead of a turbine (as on land). Natgas and coal are cheaper hydrocarbons.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.PETR.ZS

Oil’s benefit is its density, storability and pumpability.

All I know is that a giant ship is the most cost-effective way to transport anything heavy by vehicle.

A few percent improved efficiency in exchange for losing a handful of container capacity on a ship carrying several thousand is a net positive. And cargo shipping is a tight business.

Battery storage and conversion losses are far less than the conversion losses from generating electricity from an ICE.

The primary issue with ships is you don’t get to recharge the batteries every night - so you need way more capacity than an equivalent application on land (even if ships are very efficient)

>Battery storage and conversion losses are far less than the conversion losses from generating electricity from an ICE.

No, they are not. Here's some research for large-scale battery storage systems:

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1409737 Rround-trip energy storage efficiency is reported as 70% - 80%. Any crappy genset will match that.

I really don't understand this idea for a "hybrid" ship. What size battery would you need, to power the electricals of a ship for a sea voyage? What is the payback period to the shipping company?

> a kit that could turn any ICE vehicle into a hybrid.

Doable but unpractical in many situations. Internal combustion engine based vehicles are usually a lot heavier than their electric-born counterparts, so their performance would suffer.

It’s usually the opposite: electric vehicles are heavier than their ICE equivalents:

https://www.reviewgeek.com/116061/are-electric-trucks-heavie...

I’d like to see a fleet of autonomous small ships. Start with car carriers for expensive cars.

Part of the logic of current big ships is fuel efficiency.

If fuel was much cheaper, (which is true for renewable energy) then more, smaller ships might make sense.

If the crew could be automated, that further tips towards fleets of smaller ships.

This then has knock on effects for variable delivery times (fast and expensive as well as slow and cheap) and the size of canals and ports, and dredging requirements which allows things to arrive closer to their final destination.

I don't think most people appreciate how automated commercial vessels already are. The ship navigates autonomously from port to port. If you have a twenty man crew on a commercial vessel, they are split across two 12 hours shifts, you may only have one officer on the bridge during on watch, a few engineers below supervising the engines and performing preventative maintenance while underway, and able seamen will be doing the rounds checking nothing amiss such as loads moving etc. The crew are largely there to respond in the event of a crisis as commercial vessels are such an expensive asset.

I think it's better to think of the crew doing underway asset management than "sailing" the vessel.

Container ships witch ICE travel 20 knots/hr.

Sail ships average 6 knots/hr and wind is less consistent.

There are some companies working on Kites to reduce fuel consumption. https://www.airseas.com/seawing

If the automation is there, is there a reason why more container ships at least partially utilize wind for locomotion? Is it just that retrofitting a giant sail isn't feasible onto existing ships?

Flettner Rotor sails appear to be becoming a thing, they partner well with electric ships, similar to how some electric planes use multiple propellers and EV automobiles can do independent 4 wheel drive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship

Actually the analog to the all wheel thing might be:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azipod

I forgot to mention sailboats, so zero fossil fuels.

Watch standing can be automated to a limited extent, which will allow minor reductions in crew costs. But vessels making long ocean voyages out of easy reach from shore will still need human crew members to conduct repairs and maintenance while underway. And no, if a ship breaks down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean it's not feasible to fly engineers out in a helicopter to effect repairs.