The World's Biggest Electric Ship Charges Up | Hacker News Reader

The World's Biggest Electric Ship Charges Up

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22 pointsthunderbong13 comments

I like the idea of battery powered ships for short haul ferries. I'm expecting nuclear-powered civilian ships like the Savannah, Otto Hahn, Mutsu, and all the Russian icebreakers to be the better solution for longer haul cargo, tanker, and cruise ships.

The trouble with nuclear ships is to keep the radioactive materials safe from everyone who’d love to turn it into at least a dirty bomb.

I'm quite surprised that they went for what looks like a high-speed catamaran, as these are historically fairly energy-expensive. They used to be commonly used for the Ireland-Britain routes, say, but were largely withdrawn as fuel got expensive; they just got too expensive to operate vs conventional craft.

EDIT: Ah. It looks like it actually won't be very high speed in normal operation; 25 knots.

It would be interesting to find out how this short-haul Electric vehicle will be transported from Hobart, Tasmania to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It's long distance and can be rough seas. In fact it's so far that I can't be sure if they would go East or West, neither seems compellingly better offhand.

Well it can carry 225 cars, so I imagine you could load a couple of generators and some diesel tankers. Or you could just tow it.

You could do a lot of things, none of them are trivial. I'm curious as to which they choose and why.

e.g. If your choice is towing a 225 car ferry around either Cape Agulhas or Tierra del Fuego, then more than trivial planning will be involved. And likely, waiting for the right time of year. i.e. Not winter in June -> September.

From there list hulls 102, and 103 have slightly larger battery storage of 45MWh batteries, these replacing previous Incat Catamarans on the Aarhus-Sjællands Odde route, one I know quite well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incat#Deliveries

The current ships are used as a bus station. Various coaches use the ship, and people can transfer whilst on the ship.

“The FERRY that's also a FLOATING bus terminal. Denmark's STRANGE bus service Copenhagen to Aarhus”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rTdXe5jDojk

By strange one assumes he means innovative.

When I was in central Norway, I took a fjord cruise on a very large electric boat. The largest I've ever seen anywhere. It was amazing and a highlight of the trip.

It was just such a better experience quietly drifting along this beautiful and scenic place. It made me realize how loud normal boats are.

And how smelly.

We took the ferry from Iceland to Denmark via the Faroe Islands. The entire multi day trip our cabin stank of diesel fumes because of how the wind was blowing the exhaust.

Crew said it was normal, my headache didn’t agree.

Sounds like an epic trip besides the headache and smells.

Iceland for three months, then all the way down through Europe and into the Sahara in Tunisia.

Absolutely incredible

These articles tend to skip the infrastructure for charging the battery.

I’m guessing they’re in turn a large battery that draws a standard current so the ferry can be fast charged.

Maybe not as amazing, but a key piece of infrastructure.

There is this:

> The two cities are 60 kilometers apart, a distance Hull 096 is expected to travel in 90 minutes. Direct current charging stations will be installed at each port, and will draw energy from the two countries’ grids. A full charge is expected to take just 40 minutes.

More details on how this works would also be cool. But would it be that different from one or more scaled up EV fast chargers?

We can assume that the boat won't need a full charge after each 90 minute journey. In other words, "top up" recharging while docked for loading and unloading for the normal period of time will be fine.

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