It should take around 50 hours to fully charge its batteries under ideal conditions. That is 5 - 10 days realistically. I guess it's impractical considering that it will ferry across the River Plate.
> At least as long as a substantial percentage of total charge can come from the integrated solar
Yes, but that's highly doubtful. It doesn't work for EVs with panels on the car's roof - you don't get significant charge from it. It's far more practical to put the panels on a larger, fixed structure where the vehicles charges daily.
Any flat surface on a ship that is designed for electric should be covered in flexible solar panels.
Why do this if it can’t fully charge the ship? To offset the costs of charging the ship at port, to provide longer range by providing a lower voltage power source for 12V DC charging (cell phones, iPads, 5w LED lights).
So the commenter is correct, she needs panels and the fact that this isn’t part of the launch shows that they were more interested in being first than practical.
It's not a long range vessel, but it should have a fairly long service life.
Additional weight and complexity on a one off boat would be more expensive than a seperate much more standard solar and battery system on land. And you might be able to get additional value out of selling electricity from an oversized storage.
It's not sensible to draw your system boundaries around the boat by itself; there is significant terminal infrastructure; and even grid electrical infrastructure to consider.
Pintegrated panel design,cost, and maintenance can be more expensive than the puchace price of electricity. Putting pannels on regular ground is vastly more efficient.
This is kinda like saying everyone should wear solar hats to offset their home electric bill.
I’m not a sparky but would you need inverters if the panels are just for charging batteries? On the other hand, there is probably already inverters onboard to provide AC power to passenger power points.
No, you need some kind of DC converter to regulate voltage, but no inherent requirement to go to AC. Lots of small camping and off grid systems do that.
Although at the scale of a one off boat i would think it's cheaper to use the more widespread systems for bigger grid connected panel installations; so you are back to inverters.
The energy is not free, since the solar panels cost money and don't last forever. Even at optimistic prices, it's still something like 0.03 USD/kWh. Install them on a boat and they have to deal with constant vibrations, humid conditions, seagulls shitting all over them, etc etc etc.
I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
Do you have solar panels on top of your head? If not why do you leave that space unused? Space being there is one of the worst possible reasons. That bloats designs and makes them expensive to build and maintain.
Talk to a marine engineer about the overhead (equipment, training, emergency procedures, etc.) of adding a small-scale solar plant to all the things that they've already got to deal with on a ship.
And recall that this bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt... - will need a multi-billion dollar replacement, because the tiny engineering staff of a huge freighter could not diagnose and correct a surprise electrical failure. Within the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the initial fault, and when the collision became physically inevitable.
It should take around 50 hours to fully charge its batteries under ideal conditions. That is 5 - 10 days realistically. I guess it's impractical considering that it will ferry across the River Plate.
If it can charge while sailing there is no downside. At least as long as a substantial percentage of total charge can come from the integrated solar.
When Argentine gets enough solar over-provision, ship owners might make money by charging during negative solar prices.
> At least as long as a substantial percentage of total charge can come from the integrated solar
Yes, but that's highly doubtful. It doesn't work for EVs with panels on the car's roof - you don't get significant charge from it. It's far more practical to put the panels on a larger, fixed structure where the vehicles charges daily.
Sources e.g.
https://octopusev.com/ev-hub/why-dont-electric-cars-have-sol...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2022/11/30/why-doe...
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/ykwd89/w...
Any flat surface on a ship that is designed for electric should be covered in flexible solar panels.
Why do this if it can’t fully charge the ship? To offset the costs of charging the ship at port, to provide longer range by providing a lower voltage power source for 12V DC charging (cell phones, iPads, 5w LED lights).
So the commenter is correct, she needs panels and the fact that this isn’t part of the launch shows that they were more interested in being first than practical.
It’s possible adding panels could reduce the range because they’re heavy and so high up on the ship.
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It's not a long range vessel, but it should have a fairly long service life.
Additional weight and complexity on a one off boat would be more expensive than a seperate much more standard solar and battery system on land. And you might be able to get additional value out of selling electricity from an oversized storage.
It's not sensible to draw your system boundaries around the boat by itself; there is significant terminal infrastructure; and even grid electrical infrastructure to consider.
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Pintegrated panel design,cost, and maintenance can be more expensive than the puchace price of electricity. Putting pannels on regular ground is vastly more efficient.
This is kinda like saying everyone should wear solar hats to offset their home electric bill.
Probably more efficient to keep inverters, panels etc on land.
I’m not a sparky but would you need inverters if the panels are just for charging batteries? On the other hand, there is probably already inverters onboard to provide AC power to passenger power points.
No, you need some kind of DC converter to regulate voltage, but no inherent requirement to go to AC. Lots of small camping and off grid systems do that.
Although at the scale of a one off boat i would think it's cheaper to use the more widespread systems for bigger grid connected panel installations; so you are back to inverters.
You would be consuming fossil fuels to charge a ship when the sun is giving you energy for free.
At least capture some of that to charge some batteries or extend the length of your voyage.
Read again. I said you can put the panels on land where it is 100x easier and cheaper to install them vs on a ship. Solar panels are not fossil fuel.
The energy is not free, since the solar panels cost money and don't last forever. Even at optimistic prices, it's still something like 0.03 USD/kWh. Install them on a boat and they have to deal with constant vibrations, humid conditions, seagulls shitting all over them, etc etc etc.
I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
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Why don’t electric cars and trucks have solar panels then?
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more efficient to leave surface unused?
Yes, it is more efficient to install it on land. The installation will be cheaper, maintainance will be cheaper and the panels will last longer.
More efficient to spend the same amount of money on shoreside panels with lower installation costs.
Do you have solar panels on top of your head? If not why do you leave that space unused? Space being there is one of the worst possible reasons. That bloats designs and makes them expensive to build and maintain.
Same reason EVs rarely have solar panels; adds weight and complexity, making it more expensive than putting the panels somewhere less wet and salty.
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Talk to a marine engineer about the overhead (equipment, training, emergency procedures, etc.) of adding a small-scale solar plant to all the things that they've already got to deal with on a ship.
And recall that this bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt... - will need a multi-billion dollar replacement, because the tiny engineering staff of a huge freighter could not diagnose and correct a surprise electrical failure. Within the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the initial fault, and when the collision became physically inevitable.