Can you guess which is going to win? It turns out that charging really large batteries is a problem. It also turns out that politicians and environmental activists, and probably corporate executives, know little or nothing about physics and engineering.
We have a story from MGUY Australia on the reality of charging batteries. An all electric ferry was planned between Gothenburg, Sweden and Frederikshavn, Denmark. The length of that passage is about 100 kilometers. First is an article from 2021 when the plans were announced. Stena Line signs deal to launch two battery-powered ferries by 2030
Said to be the world’s first fossil fuel-free RoPax vessels of their size, these ferries will be able to accommodate between 1,000 and 1,500 passengers.
They will have a battery capacity of 60-70 MWh and require a high voltage shore power cable of around 30-40 MW.
RoPax stands for Roll-on, Passenger ferry. This would be a ship that can handle both cars, and people without their cars.
Finding a spare 30 to 40 Megawatts of power is not easy, and it's not only the excess capacity. Electricity generation at that level is not like turning on a light switch. That is 30 MW of transient load. That is the kind of load that can bring down a power grid. You would basically need a separate power plant, which you would spin up, charge the battery, and then shut down.
When they decided to shut the project down, they didn't bother to translate the "bad news" into English, but Google translate can help with that. Stena Line stoppar elfärjeplaner – tar för lång tid att få elnät - OR - Stena Line stops electric ferry plans – takes too long to get electricity grid.
The world's first fossil-free ferry lines were supposed to be in place by 2030, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Stena Line's planned investment of approximately SEK 3 billion in two new electric ferries between Gothenburg and Fredrikshavn has been halted until further notice, reports Dagens industri.
"The most important reason is that unfortunately it is expected to take too long to get access to an electricity grid connection to be able to charge fully electric ships quickly enough," says Johan Live, press manager at Stena Line to Di.
They go on to try and put lipstick on that pig, but in the end they will be running the ferry between those two cities on diesel engines. But don't worry, they will be capable of running on biofuel and e-methanol. (Pay no attention to the environmental devastation caused by palm oil plantations in Indonesia!)
This is MGUY Australia's video ⚡️⚡️ Electric Ferry CANCELLED - bet you can't guess why! ⚡️⚡️
Well, I'll tell you one thing; it won't be the last time that a project like this is mugged by reality.
The video is 8 minutes.
Find Part 1 at this link: Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Versus Physics - Part 1
Editing this post to correct some typos, got me thinking about how proud they are to be going hybrid. There is only one problem with that. Ships have been going hybrid for more than 2 decades.
ReplyDeleteMost new cruise ships run gas generators. They usually run on jet fuel, which is like high-grade kerosene. The use the turbines to generate electricity, use the exhaust heat to generate steam, and even more electricity, and then run everything - especially the propulsor pods - on electricity, with backup generators for shipboard systems when the engines are not running. This was happening 2 decades ago.
Apparently the tech is branching out to other applications, like merchant shipping.
So now a whole boat of cars goes up in blow torch flames instead of just the car,,,,,BRILLIANT
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