EV shipping is set to blow internal combustion engines out of the water
pv-magazine-usa.com
pv-magazine-usa.com
This was the nugget for me. Big if true, as they say.
It's also not entirely clear if these figures consider "utility power" which is a major function of any container ship that's going to haul refrigerated or frozen cargo.
The main engine is a major source of electrical power on board, but there are also usually several large electrical generators on board to satisfy the demand of these types of containers.
Do hybrids make any sense at all if you're mostly operating at a constant load, like I imagine container-ships do? It's not like they're stuck in stop and start traffic across the Pacific.
The issue with a big diesel engine like this actually turning the prop or wheels is the size of the transmission required. The engines are massive and the transmission would also be massive to cope with the power and torque. You also eliminate a moving part so much more reliable.
Electric motors are far more robust than ICEs. Wear parts consist of bearings and cooling (although this last is much simpler at 90% efficiency than 50%).
The control circuitry is a potential failure point, but it's small enough that you could run two or three redundant versions and maintain the one that is off.
It sounds like you've included the solution for on board power. Keep using the same generators where they too aren't replaced with batteries (or on board solar may be viable) or in extreme edge cases, use one of the existing ships -- they're not all going to he retrofit on day one.
So, there's no point in putting a solar array on the deck of one of these things.
(You’d think pure wind power would do this as well—the engines can in theory work less hard if the sails are full—but wind is too precarious to match the slow ramp-up/ramp-down times of the giant motors used to power boat propellers. Those things are what power plant designers would call “base load” — mostly you don’t even turn them off, you just engage a giant clutch to put the boat into neutral when you don’t want to be moving. The master “transmission” of a boat is essentially a cylindrical steel flywheel; and you don’t want to lose its momentum. This is why boats a good match for bunker-fuel furnaces — or, on subs, nuclear — which are power sources that also ramp up/down slowly.)
That would be a very surprising result to me. I don't think we're maxed out on automation until the ships are loaded at the port, travel to their destination, then unloaded at the destination with no human labor.
Unless you're telling me that robots load, unload, pilot and maintain the ships at sea, we aren't anywhere near maximum automation.
Unless you are willing to risk loosing the ship due to a 1-in-1000 event which your automation did not take into account, then this is your limit. And ships are expensive, even compared to officer salaries. And those generate most of the crewing costs anyways. So if you have to pay 6 officers, adding 2-3 for the engine to require less dock-time and 12 ratings really doesn't push up your costs that much (especially not compared to the capital cost). But you get a lot of redundancy.
So yeah, I would say most of the economically viable automation has been done
But this has been a surprisingly interesting rabbit hole, thanks for that.
There are different numbers for ships around starting with 50k [0] on the low end and the high end is 100k [1] being operated by between 1.5m [2] and 1.9m [3] personell. At the outer edge this would give 40 people per ship. Whereas reports put the number more at 20-25 [4]. The last one also mentions that there are requirements, by law, which typically require something like 6 people (often with nationality requirements) to be on board.
All sources e.g. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264024/number-of-merchan... [1] https://hbs.unctad.org/merchant-fleet/ [2] https://www.ics-shipping.org/shipping-fact/shipping-and-worl... [3] https://www.ics-shipping.org/press-release/russian-and-ukrai... [4] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Docume...
Sticking a wind turbine on your boat, on the other hand, is basically regenerative braking. You turn the excess speed you don’t want/need at the time, into stored power for later when you do need it, to exactly the degree to leave you with the speed you want. A tailwind is to a boat as “going downhill” is to a car.
https://maersktankers.com/newsroom/norsepower-rotor-sails-co...
1- Do shipping lanes still stick to prevailing winds, or are more direct routes significantly faster?
2- Would becalmed seas or being blown off course by a storm be a big enough risk that ships would still need a full compliment of fuel, or close enough as to make the maintenance costs of both engine and sails, weight and other factors override the benefit?
3- Does the addition of sails increase the risk of rolling or swaying stresses on the ship? I imagine this might require some extensive structural changes or upgrades to ships, with no idea of what the cost would be compared to a different kind of retrofit (i.e. continuing to use propellers but with a different fuel source).
And of course, you can't readily make the whole upper surface of a container ship into panels, because cranes lift containers off the ship.
https://www.istockphoto.com/video/oil-tanker-floating-in-the...
Much of the benefit of solar and batteries would be obviated by the need to propel their own bulk along though.
I mean there's at least a chance that the nuclear reactor which costs 10x as much as the proposed electric ship will get stolen wholesale and used for civilian purposes, so that could be an upside.
I'm not saying it's all, ahem, plain sailing, but that part at least isn't a necessary risk.
So far it hasn't really been economically feasible unlike icebreakers. Russia is the only one who is operating those.
If a ship is already diesel-electric (which many are) then you need to calculate if adding a solar panel saves more fuel costs over its lifetime than its upfront cost.
If it does, then you can add more and keep doing that calculation until the point where the cost exactly matches the savings.
Seems like cargo ships would be less suited to this initally than tanker ships though, since they don't carry items on their flat upper areas.
If your batteries have to do 2400 out of 2500km and then 2100km out of 2500km in two stretches that's a 10% reduction in battery cost (and a cargo increase).
Even at 6% (high but achievable efficiency in the mid term) it's still worth slapping them on if it doesn't interfere with operation too much as they weigh comparatively nothing.
That's a lot of batteries. Not sure if that much industrial capacity will be available soon enough.
Also, I'd really really hate to be the person that has to fight a marine fire on board the 6.5 GWhr battery barge.
Math based on 2500 gallons per mile for a 3106 mile trip, converted to km and liters, then divided by a 55 liter tank.
According to the linked website:
> This video features an electric bus with a new type of lithium polymer battery
The entire world production of neodymium was on the order of 80k ton/yr the last I checked (though that was quite a few years ago).
The key difference being that once you extract it, you can first re-use it for decades, then recycle it. Whereas with fossil fuels you need to continually dig up more to replace the ones you burned and vented into the atmosphere then ship it to where it is used.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/electric-car-b...
For sure, there is some pollution involved in extraction of the elements, but you do it once.
Contrast that with oil where you burn it and it’s done, you start over.
Electrification start with cars, then planes, then ships unless there is major breakthrough that reduce the cost of batteries.
There's no real way to put out a lithium fire of that size, even if you extinguish it, it may start again days later. Has to go overboard one way or another.
A panamax cargo ship burns ~250 tons of bunker fuel a day and carries ~15k containers. Cruising speed is a little over 1000 km / day.
The energy density of bunker fuel is approx 12500 wh / kg. Lead-acid batteries hold 50 wh / kg while high-end li-ion cells hold 500 wh / kg.
By those numbers it sounds like you'd need approx 6000 tons of high-end lithium cells per day of operation - you can put 40 tons in a shipping container (much more and many ports will refuse to unload), so 150 containers of batteries per day of travel. A 5000km trip is going to use 5% of your cargo space for fuel (where previously it would be closer to 0.1%). That adds up to real money (you could have moved 750 containers at approx $5000 each, so you lost ~3.75 million, but the fuel would have only cost approx 0.3 to 1.5 million USD depending on where you fill up).
For short trips (sub 1000km) I suspect they'd probably use cheaper, less-energy-dense ni-mh batteries as they are safer and cost less than half as much for a comparable charge.
Edit: looks like they’re more efficient than most ICE at around 50%. That at least cuts down the cost spread a fair bit.
There's a reason anything bigger than a power drill switched years ago.
This presentation does ballpark analysis of the problem:
Even if the numbers are off by an order of magnitude, them problem remains worrisome and difficult to solve at scale.
So far we have scaled to a few percent of what would need to be rebuilt every 20 years indefinitely.
But, the fact that this guy mentios the gold standard, criticizes the EU, the WEF, and talks about EROEI means he's mostly a conspiracy theorist.
It's a repeated pattern to say "big numbers mean this is impossible!". Solar PV was impossible, Wind Power was impossible, EVs were impossible, on and on and on.
His numbers aren't wrong as far as I can tell, but he's just repeating the same things that people who think it's a good idea are saying, then adding on the lie that "they never considered this, the fools, they'll doom us all".
About 25 minutes in he reveals that we'll need to double our electricity production.
Except we know that, we also know that it means we'd need half as much primary power, since we wouldn't be wasting so much of it as heat.
Here's a 2018 government report looking at this phenomenon in electrifying the US. This is entirely typical of real work in this area, despite his attempts to imply that clueless beaurocrats are just making things up.
https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/analysis-demand-side-...
edit: I particularly enjoy his "The ERoEI for renewable energy systems is much lower than fossil fuel energy systems. Renewable energy systems may not be strong enough to replace fossil fuels".
Oh, it's not strong enough. That weak, puny renewable electricity.
Followed up with "energy is becoming more expensive". Wow, no wonder he's so pessimistic.
You mean air freight, right?
In my book it’s not green if it’s not completely green. And EVs are certainly not.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/largest-lng-powered-contai...
Interesting idea though in that you could pump the two chemical solutions into the ship. Sail it to it's destination and then pump the used fluids out and replace them with fresh. And it's not a bomb like lithium ion batteries.
Sodium is pretty abundant and much more easily accessible than lithium.
But how efficient are the coal, nuclear, or natural gas needed to charge the batteries? At best 60%? Was it mid 20s or mid 30s for PWR nukes? 50% thermal efficiency is insanely good.
And the battery ship? To the 90% battery efficiency, knock a few trips through a transformer (95%) and power converter. So 0.6 * 0.95 * 0.95 * 0.9 - = 0.48% thermal efficiency
By contrast shipping fuel is a waste product that is going to get made whether or not the ships sail (i.e. largely free to produce energetically).
Talk to me about cleaning ships S emissions and Ill get excited. In the meantime put all those Li ion batteries into hybrid versions of Ford F350 and heavy trucks used by contractors. That will make a much larger dent in CO2 emissions.
Shipping oil is filthy, dirty, hard to use. To a good approximation one wants it. To a better approximation no one on land can use it because if its high S content precludes it from being used on land (illegal and you need something that can deal with high Sulphuric acid)
Its a byproduct of the refinery that only shipping can use (they can and do burn straight diesel too). It is really very cheap. [1]
Ban it, if you must. But without market shenanigans itll never be cheaper to use a massive battery.
[1] without looking at the price, I wouldn't be surprised if its currently gone up in price. In Europe right now anyone who can burn it on shore is eyeing it and the EU has suspended many environment regulation. But thats a blip; once Germany's economy collapses the EU's energy needs will be much smaller
> Fuel consumption at maximum power is 0.278 lbs per hp per hour (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption). Fuel consumption at maximum economy is 0.260 lbs/hp/hour. At maximum economy the engine exceeds 50% thermal efficiency. That is, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel in converted to motion. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA9...
[2] http://www.emma-maersk.com/engine/Wartsila_Sulzer_RTA96-C.ht...
[3] https://www.mhi.co.jp/technology/review/pdf/e501/e501055.pdf
Shipping fuel is a filthy byproduct no one really wants. Some of it can be cracked to other products but, in the end, if it ain't burned on ships it will be just burned onshore, probably a third world country, in whatever burner can deal with its acidity or in a big blowtorch to heaven
Let's assume the solar array operates at some medium yield of 4,5 kWh / (sqm * day) [2].
Assuming you have some big enough battery on board to evenly supply the solar harvest of the sunny hours over 24h this results in a contant power output of: ~ 0,18 kW / sqm
So to replace the 80 MW engine you'd need a solar array of more than 400000 sqm.
If you tow several floating arrays that are 100 m wide and 200 m long, you'd need 20 of those.
Sounds like a challenge at least for the huge vessels.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA9... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Solar_potenti...
And they start chopping up bug ships to make smaller more regional ones. Which jives with the analysis here. But given that bigger boats afaik almost always are more efficient moving through the water (short of hydrofoiled or wing-in-groumd craft), I didnt totally get this notion.
Tesla?
now imagine these batteries catching fire, just like Teslas routinely do.
I dont want to be on that container ship
now imagine this fuel catching fire, just like ICE cars routinely do.
I dont want to be on that container ship
However, it's possible that a battery-powered ship could catch fire, so we need to avoid this technology and stick with oil.
/s
The failure modes of EV batteries are probably quite different to those on ships (ships don't collide with other things nearly as often as cars collide with other things, for one). I'm sure ships have their own issues (e.g. falling into disrepair due to lax regulation requirements at the lowest-priced-ports-of-convenience), but you can't really compare an EV ship with an EV car.
Isn't this just FUD? A quick google tells me that ICE cars catch fire much more often than electric vehicles do. Although I have no idea how often container ships catch fire.
Imagine you are sleeping at your house, parked your EV in garage and it catches fire and burns your whole house down.
https://www.businessinsider.com/couples-tesla-caught-fire-ch...
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/08/business/hyundai-kia-fire...
In fact, I cannot think of it ever happening. The most recent thing that matches your perception was a Ford model that was know for catching fire when overheating.
It made news precisely because it is so rare.
No, the FUD is actually the other way around - fires in ICE models are always found to be electrical faults.
The only exception I can think of is the Ford Kuga from 2019 or so; and even then, it was down to manufacturing/design defect in the turbo, not the engine itself.
Also, electrical systems are pretty intertwined with any modern ICE engine - you'd have to go back to crank starts to remove that.
I don't think so - ICE cars are going to have much less wiring (that can catch fire) than electric vehicles.
IOW, if you think poor wiring in cars is a fire problem now, you can't also claim that cars with more wiring will be a smaller fire problem.
Hence I called it FUD - If cars are mostly catching fire due to electrical problems, putting more electrical components (like wiring) that carries more current (max in an ICE car is maybe 60A for starter cables, and 10A - 15A for everything else), it's pure FUD that increasing the wiring, and increasing the current carried in the electrical system will cause fewer fires.
I just don't see how adding more fire-causing components, and increasing the current is going to result in fewer fires.
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/natural-resource-...
Edit: Probably wouldn't happen though. I feel like if swapping was gonna work, it would be done in smaller vehicles already
Whereas ships are dominated by the cargo profile: shipping containers.
To your second point, let it always be remembered that the first electric busses, from the early 20th century, used a battery swap system. It can be done, especially on industrial vehicles. Personally I don’t understand why it isn’t being done today for electrified bus networks.
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1...
How do batteries disperse/degrade or get recovered at sea when the inevitable cargo loss or hull loss occurs?
Possibly the answer to both of those is systemic - but it is at least that.
For the other issue... probably no perfect solution.
Cars: https://www.nio.com/blog/nio-users-china-have-completed-10-m...
Scooters: https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/
The first is no more polluting then any other type of mining.
The second can cause some problems but I would call it polluting.
So what are you actually referring to?
umm no.
https://www.wired.com/story/china-lithium-mining-production/
China dominates the supply chain, not the source of lithium.