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Plug-in and Sail: Meet the Electric Ferry Pioneers

posted by martyb on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-long-is-the-extension-cord? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

BBCTech:

Powered entirely by batteries, Ellen is something of a Tesla among ferries. Fully charged, the 60m vessel can sail 22 nautical miles with up to 200 passengers and 30 cars onboard.

[...] Totalling 4.3MWh this is the largest battery capacity at sea and equivalent to the average amount of electricity a UK household consumes each year.

[...] After a 70 minute voyage, Ellen arrives at the harbour in Søby and moors alongside the charging station.

A mechanical arm plugs in and recharges the batteries in less than 25 minutes with clean energy supplied by local wind turbines.

[...] "We are paying maybe 25% of what you would pay for running a similar diesel vessel." says Ms Heinemann. "So that's the significant saving."

Electric propulsion is beginning to spread from passenger cars to trucks and now ferries.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:08AM (2 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:08AM (#943423) Journal
    I think some submariners would disagree.
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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:44AM (1 child)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:44AM (#943498) Journal

    kWh [epsilor.com] vs MWh

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @09:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @09:09AM (#943518)

      That is just one pack. While I can't find as much info as I would like, which I suppose is to be expected, everything I'm finding indicates batteries on the order of a couple MWh (and I imagine this is quite conservative).

      http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph241/ditiangkin1/ [stanford.edu] mentions an ohio-class sub having 2.6 MWh capacity, citing an IEEE article I don't have access to.

      https://www.suicideslabs.com/dw/arc/papers/223v1r2a.pdf [suicideslabs.com] has a table on page 12 (40 according to my pdf viewer) - indicating > 1.5MWh

      https://fleetsubmarine.com/battery.html [fleetsubmarine.com] mentions WWII subs having a pair of 126-cell batteries with a combined discharge rate around 15,000A - while it doesn't mention capacity, the discharge rate is comparable to the trident cells above.

      All of that is good old-fashioned lead-acid, and while I don't have evidence handy for larger capacities in more modern submarines, it certainly seems plausible that they exist.