BBC:
[The canal boat company] has converted six boats so far - it takes about three months to strip out the old diesel engine and install the electric engine and batteries. A typical 23m (75ft) tourist boat needs about 66 batteries, he says, making the conversion cost around 165,000 to 250,000 euros ($189,000 to $287,000; £145,000 to £220,000) per boat.
But the engines are quieter, cleaner and cheaper to run - boat companies should recoup their costs in about 12 years, according to the Paris Process on Mobility and Climate, a body supporting sustainable transport projects.
They can be recharged in about 10 hours and last about two days between charges, says Sigrid Hanekamp, an application engineer from Dutch battery company Lithium Werks, which supplied the batteries for Reederij Kooij's boats.
These batteries are not your typical lead-acid type traditionally used in cars, or even the type of lithium-ion ones becoming standard in electric vehicles, she explains. They're lithium-iron-phosphate, a chemistry Lithium Werks believes is more durable and environmentally friendly.
The boats have been converted to comply with Amsterdam's mandate that all canal boats be converted to electric by 2025, as a measure meant to preserve the environment and reduce noise.
Are measures like these heavy-handed, or necessary to move mankind past dependence on fossil fuels?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:06PM (19 children)
I won't comment on the conversion cost, because I don't know if 250k euros is a lot or a little compared to the cost of the boat. I know it is about the average cost of a family house, so "bloody expensive" to me.
What they do say is that it will take about 12 years to recoup the cost. My question is, how long do the batteries last? Unlike fuel tanks, batteries wear out with use and cycles, storing less and less energy (and needing more energy to charge up, reducing their efficiency).
If the batteries only last 6 years before they need replacing, then your "12 year recoup" would never occur, as you would find half way through the recoup that you need to re-buy a new set of batteries, pushing your recoup forward by another 12 years or so.
I am going to go have a read on this battery chemistry. It would be interesting to see how they hold up to repeated charge cycles. Electric car batteries are not very good, lasting maybe 5 years until their range reduces to the point of not being useful anymore, and even that is by understating the battery pack energy storage in the first place, allowing for the appearance of a battery that lasts longer.
Hopefully these batteries are better than that. Lead acid do very well for recycling and multiple deep cycles, but they are horribly heavy, and hence not used often for systems that require to move under their own motive power.
As a general rule, if a new technology is better than the old one, people will move to it without needing coercion by threat of force (i.e. government mandate).
A good example is the motor car, nobody needed government legislation to make people switch from Horses to cars, people could not wait to do it (but for most, cost prevented them). Indeed government regulation got in the way of faster adoption, and some regulations were repealed (like the "Red flag traffic laws" in the UK) as time went on.
In this case, there are reasons to do it beyond reducing need of fossil fuel (because if they wanted that, they could just use biodiesel), namely the boats would be quieter. If long "refuel" time and short travel time is acceptable for the requirements, then why not?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:31PM (2 children)
> people will move to it without needing coercion by threat of force
Demonstrated to be false throughout human history. If you have already invested recently in X because all your other assets use X, then transferring your company to Y is less lucrative. Investment inertia is a thing.
> beyond reducing need of fossil fuel
the point was "pollution" , which biofuel reduces, but not as much as any other cleaner type of generation would.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:47PM (1 child)
Unless the better thing is really that much better to be worth abandoning your investment. Alternatively, even if you just put in a lot of investment in technology that is not as good, when it comes for renewal, you will switch to the better tech as soon as it makes economic sense to do so. In some cases you may even shorten the lifecycle of your last investment in order to move to the better tech sooner.
And I gave you an example of such an event. Mobile phones is another one, airplanes yet another. In fact thinking about it now, through human history, it seems to be have been demonstrated as true throughout, rather than false as you contend. From the first people who moved to fire, to those who moved from rock to copper, then bronze, then iron and steel tools onwards.
When have people overall, deliberately chosen not to switch over to better technology?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:45PM
>Unless the better thing is really that much better to be worth abandoning your investment.
True. However, that is *very* rarely the case. Even less so when most of the benefits are spread across society, while the costs are carried by the individual making the decision. Tragedy of the commons, and just as with avoiding degradation, encouraging improvement requires some form of coercion.
Also, none of the things you mention carry any significant investment inertia. Buying a mobile phone does not generally mean discarding a significant capital investment in land-lines - all that investment was made by the phone company, while you only paid the cost of a very cheap phone. Ditto airplanes - they compete somewhat with rail, but have very different strengths and weaknesses, and I don't believe rail companies were lining up to invest in airlines anyway. Cars? They were primarily toys for rich men for a long time, and even when the Model T finally changed that I'd bet you they didn't replace that many healthy horses - They may have undermined the market for new horses, but I seriously doubt the car adoption rate significantly exceeded the normal horse retirement rate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pe1rxq on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:35PM (5 children)
The 12 year recoup is for the whole conversion. So not only the batteries, but also a new engine and stripping it and modifying it to accommodate the new engine and batteries.
So the recoup time for the batteries will be less than 12 years.
As for lithium-iron-phosphate: they are supposed to last more than 10 years.
And they should handle at least 2000 charge cycles. Charging once every two days (as mentioned in the article) ends up just short of 11 years.
I don't know how accurate the numbers are, but it looks like they add up.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Unixnut on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:52PM (4 children)
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the 85% of the cost of a battery electric drivetrain is in the batteries. Is that not the case? As such I would expect the cost of the batteries to be the main initial (and ongoing cost) of running such a machine.
If it takes 12 years to break even on the investment, and the batteries will last round 11 years, it doesn't seem like a good idea. You work for 12 years to break even, and on the 11th year, you have to re-buy the battery pack, which could put your break even forward another 8 years or so. So now you have to work 19 years, and out of it you may only have 3 years worth of "profit years".
Saying that, I have no idea what kind of profit/breakeven they were having before with the Diesel systems, so maybe it is better for them. As this is done by government mandate, either it will be better for them, or it will be worse, in which case some may go bust over the next 20 years.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:02PM
If the break-even cost is done correctly, it would include the battery replacement, i.e. the sustained operation on battery (incl. replacement) will amortize within 12 yrs.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:51PM
That statistic (85% of cost) is probably for cars, which don't have the same types of costs as boats when you are talking about drive trains. This conversion was probably moderately expensive in terms of re-fitting the boats, because a diesel engine is really almost nothing like an electric motor paired to batteries and charge controllers, etc.
Point being, the refit is most likely more than 15% of the cost estimate here.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:10AM (1 child)
Regardless of how the economics of this play out, I would hope that you could get at least a somewhat better battery at the end of those 10-12 years, seeing as there have been promises of double the energy density or more for new battery technologies, and there have been incremental improvements for Li-Ion.
If we can't get double the energy density by 2028, that would really suck (I'm aware that different product categories use different battery technologies, e.g. Li-Ion smartphones vs. Sodium-Ion grid storage).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @10:18AM
That "somewhat better battery" might require some updates, good chance it isn't going to operate at exactly the same voltage or require the same charger as the original. My guess, if the same chemistry is still available, the cost effective choice is to hope for lower price from higher volume production.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:37PM (1 child)
That's the total cost of conversion, not the price for the batteries. Keeping into account that the Chinese are deep into LiFePO4 [prnewswire.com], I would expect the prices to drop dramatically in the next 3-4 years (if one's country doesn't wage tariff wars against China, that is)
LiFePO4 - excellent lifespan, no thermal runaway risk [powertechsystems.eu].
The same link shows the number of cycles based in the Depth of Discharge and rate of discharge (scroll down) - even at a 1C rate of discharge and 100% DoD, you get 2000 cycles - at 2days/cycle that's about there around 12 years.
But, if you go to only 50% DoD, so you recharge it every night for 5 hours, you get from it about 10000 cycles - at 1D/cycle, that's 27 years.
See also wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday October 10 2018, @01:18AM
And given that the full capacity is two days operation and a 10 hour recharge, they can actually run the batteries lonfer, that is, to 50% or so capacity before they actually have to swap them out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:49PM (4 children)
Here in this case, the buyer has to pay a significant cost for only a 12y return, the new tech improves the lives of everyone else, not so much for the buyer. Hence the legislation.
Also, biodiesel doesn't reduce pollution much. It mostly changes the types of pollution. (Much more small particles exhausted)
A big problem is creating the biofuel, while "green/renewable" the methods to get enough usually involve burning down rainforests/jungle, and other not so ecologically friendly means of cultivation. My info on this is about 10 years old, so hopefully this has improved. But judging by the absence of biodiesel promotion and adoption I think its still mostly accurate.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:17PM (3 children)
Well, we don't know that. Unless there has been a referendum or something where the will of the people can be gauged, then you can say with certainty if the majority is happy with the decision.
It is far to easy for some people to claim they "speak for the majority", without asking them and just going forward with laws (talking in general here, not just about this specific point).
Why would it do that? Unless the fuel isn't being completely burned, what particles would be left over? I guess some smaller sooty particles, but most particulate filters are able to clean those up fine.
I didn't realise there were rainforests and jungle in Europe :-) In seriousness, AFAIK, in the EU biofuel is generated from food refuse and other waste, and does not compete with food or land. A lot of the work is in algae produced biofuels. What you are describing sounds to me like Brazil in the 70s, when they decided to move to bioethanol, and started to clear out massive swathes of the rainforest for sugar plantations to convert to bioethanol.
It worked, in that they were one of the first countries to have a biofuel powered transport system. but they no longer tear down the forest for it. As you noted, there was a large cost in rainforest diversity. Saying that, the Brazilians seem to look for any excuse to cut down the rainforest, if it isn't for biofuel, then it is for crops, if not that, then paper wood, or grazing cattle, and so on. One would get the feeling they really don't want to have the rainforest in their country at all.
As for the absence of biofuels, I think the opposite. They are not promoted so much because adoption is pretty common, so much so that my local fuel station has biofuels available next to the fossil fuels, and cheaper than the fossil produce. It is just a normal thing now.
Unfortunately my cars are too old, and cannot run it without conversion, so I can't use it atm, but its there, and I know many people who use it in their vehicles.
In some ways it is the best eco-conversion. The end result was exactly the same for normal people, they just stick a different coloured nozzle in their car, you get the fast fill up time (no need to wait to charge), and they still can use their existing vehicles, except now they are carbon neutral. Plus in a pinch if they are stuck running out of fuel somewhere without biofuel, they can use the fossil stuff just fine.
I think it is a far better method than trying to legislate everyone to spend a lot of money scrapping vehicles, to replace them with a technology that is currently inferior in every way except tailpipe emissions. This method allows you to convert the existing infrastructure easily to a carbon neutral system.
Indeed, one of the latest things people are doing round here is converting the plug in hybrids (like the Chevy Volt) to work on bioethanol. So you get the plug in electric for stop and go rush hour traffic, you get the range and quick fill up of ICE for longer distances, and you get the cheaper and carbon neutral fuel.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:59PM (2 children)
The diesel boats emit some really nasty pollution at/below street level in a very dense and not always windy city.
Everybody's taxes go to healthcare. The many boat owners (and those houseboats are really really expensive) are asked to stop causing their fellow citizens to get sicker, costing everyone.
If you don't legislate, many people will not bother to do a major retrofit of their home tinkering endlessly to keep their pollution in other people's lungs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:23AM (1 child)
Not sure this applies to EU, but here in the states the exhaust is vented into the water.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:27AM
How is that better? Eventually those exhaust products end up in the water supply. It is still spreading the pollution to others.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:02PM (1 child)
Not always... there's often an "adoption hump" that people are reluctant to get over. Case in point: if the 12 year ROI is true, then this _is_ a superior technology, but the resistance to the cost of conversion is going to be huge.
I believe the Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries are quite popular in automotive applications, and I, too am skeptical that they will last 12 years while remaining "superior" to diesel in energy efficiency performance. I think the whole electric argument tends to neglect the environmental costs of producing and recycling the batteries and that we're much closer to EV parity with fossil fuels when those costs are taken into account.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @10:18AM
Lithium Iron Phosphate has been the primary rechargable batteries for the larger electric RC cars/trains for 10-20 years (maybe longer, but I think it was NiMH or nicad before that.)
Their major misfeature, as I remember it, is needing to be discharged fully and then recharged with a special charge controller to match their charge profile. If you don't do this, they will fail very rapidly. They do however have better energy density than Li-Ion batteries although most are slightly more expensive for the same capacity, mostly due to their limited use-cases.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Tuesday October 09 2018, @09:14PM
I'm replying to the OP here, but no-one in all the replies seems to factor in maintenance into the ROI calculation. As the others point out, the majority of the 250k euros is to pull out the old engine and refit the entire thing with a new electric motor as well as install new batteries. In all the imaginary counting from that point on though, no-one really looks at the maintenance of an electric system compared to a diesel or bio-diesel one. Electric systems have almost no moving parts compared to a combustion engine, they require vastly less/cheaper maintenance and have much less fatigue points that can wear out easily.
For a business owner with an investment like a boat, reduced maintenance costs (and time/frequency) is a significant benefit that could vastly reduce the return on investment to swapping over to the new systems.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:55PM (2 children)
"Are measures like these heavy-handed, or necessary to move mankind past dependence on fossil fuels?"
Such measures are necessary, especially if you need it done within a certain time frame. The "invisible hand of the market" takes a long time to get things like this conversion done. People don't like change, even if they know why it's necessary and even when it's in their enlightened best interest to change. People just find change uncomfortable and inconvenient. So sometimes, like this time, it required a government mandate.
I'd like to see a government mandate to eliminate the sales of all internal combustion engines (ICE) by 2030. In all countries around the world, but most especially America. And this followed by a mandate to eliminate sales of all fossil fuels by 2040. This gives plenty of time for manufacturers to make a buck off their existing ICE R&D, plenty of time to change over to electric motors (since all that R&D has been done, both traction motors and batteries are available off the shelf for motors large and small). And those diehards who really love them some ICE have another 20 years before they won't be able to run their motors any more. All that, and late as it is, it might still slow global warming.
But just the local environmental impacts are worth it even if it doesn't touch global warming at all. It would be great not to have buses blowing crap in my face when I'm on a sidewalk, and cars and trucks not making all that noise. And of course this applies to all those noisy leaf blowers and hedge trimmers and lawn mowers in every neighborhood. The world will be a better place when ICEs are gone. And we should just do it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)
All aboard the green bus. [walesonline.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Tuesday October 09 2018, @09:28PM
The article you linked to and the way you linked it seems quite pessimistic,. An electric bus powered by a diesel generator. Not sure if you actually read all of the article though:
So, to test the electric bus, they didn't connect it to the normal grid as that would be overly expensive and are running it on a generator for the duration of the trials. I'll say this with all the sarcasm I can muster Oh the humanity!.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:22PM
no shit sherlock. you mean ripping out the engines and replacing them with electric crap isn't completely free???
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rondon on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:55PM (2 children)
I like this personally as an idea, because diesel boat engine fumes make me sick to my stomach. I very rarely get sea-sick, but when I'm on a diesel fishing boat that is idling I get sick quickly from the fumes. I am stateside, btw, so maybe Amsterdam enforces better exhaust cleaning on their ships and boats, but I doubt it.
Long story short, diesel boats make way more pollution than seems acceptable to me, and now there seems to a viable (over the course of a decade, anyway) solution to the problem for some boats.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:08PM
I agree - particularly if we can feed the batteries from nuclear power plants, oh, wait...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @05:38PM
The smell is due to the fuel that is being used, if you were to run a Diesel engine on waste vegetable oil it would smell like a chip shop.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @10:20PM (3 children)
So a boat.
That sits in water.
Running entirely on electric.
With lithium batteries.
There's... something... I don't know... call me crazy... unfortunate about that?
Don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of electricity on big boats. I'm just not sure I want to be near one when it hits something, or something leaks, that's all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @11:09PM (2 children)
And this is different from a boat-load of diesel or bunker fuel exactly how? Think, man! Think!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @02:07AM
Quite different:
+ Lithium metal reacts spontaneously with water (and even water vapor in the air) and makes a fire that can't be extinguished (at least in some cases). So the batteries have to be *extremely* well sealed, maybe they are soldered into big sardine cans with glass pass-through connections like a vacuum tube?
+ Diesel fuel on the other hand is pretty hard to ignite, takes ~20 atmospheres (compression ratio) in a Diesel engine to ignite on contact with air, and for that to work the fuel has to be very finely atomized.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Wednesday October 10 2018, @02:37AM
Sodium will react with water to produce hydrogen gas and a FUCKTON of heat, resulting in an explosion. Lithium is directly above Sodium on the periodic table, which means it should react in roughly the same way in the same situation. I expect he's making a joke about the reactability of lithium with water, the explosion that results, and the fact that boats are generally found in or around water when they have a collision with battery-puncturing potential.
For the record, I support whole-heartedly the shift to a battery/electric paradigm, while acknowledging that internal combustion engines have their place and will never totally go away. The problem isn't ICE, the problem is several million ICE in a physical space the size of say, Los Angeles, or New York. If the major cities see a massive shift to all-electric, places like Iowa, Kansas or Butt-fuck-nowhere Canada aren't going to be hurting anything by burning diesel.
- D