Hi All, newbie to the 'sailing' forum, having migrated via windsurfing.

Having spent the past few months readying our boat for cruising, I've discovered the cylinder pressures low in no.2. Engine hrs still relatively low 1,100, so will fix, but am interested in emerging technologies - especially an electric/ hybrid motor.

Plenty of references in Europe, but can't see much via Australia. Any downunder yachties gone down this route?

What replacement options exist/cost. Is it worth it?

regards
rob

Welcome Concepcion. Lovely choice of yacht. I personally would just pull the head and check the valves and see if there is any damage to the bores. Valve grind will cost very little just a bit of time.

The idea of a full electric system has appeal but I often have to motor for 30 minutes to leave the river so unless the battery technology improves I will be sticking with 30 year old technology. The diesel electric set up in boats of your size makes more sense. Have a Kubota gen set in the saloon and an electric motor on a shaft drive. I have been trying to convince my mate to use a fork lift motor to drive the winches on his trawler. There is a lot of electric drive happening with hill climb cars now and eventually we will see electric drive in yachts for sure.

I cannot see the benefit of a diesel electric system in a yacht.

The idea works in cars in the city where you have a widely varying load. In a car diesel or petrol motor can run at a steady, efficient load with the battery taking care of the peaks. On a yacht you need to be able to motor at a steady load for long periods, so where is the benefit?

I suppose there may be a benefit with a large battery pack charged by the solar panels between uses but you would still need the same power diesel for longer trips which negates any cost saving.

One the other hand I am a bit conservative about technology, so may be missing something.

Thanks LMY & yes Ramona, I purchased our van de stadt on a love at first sight basis - but so far heart still in front!

Am working on donk as we speak, and a leaky valve the issue.

As for electric replacement although frankly a bit to cautious to try something untested, am attracted to the claimed benefits: environmental; efficiency; cost; weight; quiet; and no more water cooling!

A couple of the slick electric motor websites even claim electric energy generation while under sail (via prop I assume) Keen to hear of any experiences.

Welcome C,

Electric boat propulsion is getting more feasible every year. I seriously considered making the change when my old Volvo gave up on me last year. After plenty of research I decided that although an all electric system is possible for up to 5 hours at a slow cruise, it is still far from being cost effective. (at least double the cost of repowering with a new diesel)
If money were no object - I would certainly go electric. But I just couldn't justify the cost today. Maybe in 5 years with battery technology developing fast....?

There is some good info on Elco's website, although they may stretch the facts a little bit. www.elcomotoryachts.com/

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LMY said..
I cannot see the benefit of a diesel electric system in a yacht.

The idea works in cars in the city where you have a widely varying load. In a car diesel or petrol motor can run at a steady, efficient load with the battery taking care of the peaks. On a yacht you need to be able to motor at a steady load for long periods, so where is the benefit?

I suppose there may be a benefit with a large battery pack charged by the solar panels between uses but you would still need the same power diesel for longer trips which negates any cost saving.

One the other hand I am a bit conservative about technology, so may be missing something.

The diesel electric setup would be similar to what diesel subs use on a smaller scale. The diesel is running when you use the electric drive so a large battery bank is not needed. Lot's of large yachts have diesel generators running full time to power fridges and A/C etc. The maxi yachts have diesels running full time to power the hydraulics to control winches and the keel. With an electric drive the motor is very small [relatively], does not require a gearbox, massive torque, easy to align and keep the shaft aligned. No vibration. The engine can also be mounted anywhere! With a large catamaran you could have a centrally mounted generator running two electric motors in the hulls.

On a small yacht where the electric drive replaces the diesel then it's a different matter.

At the moment even electric cars here use brown coal so there not really effective
Maybe in year to come they will find a solution
Its early days still
Audi is the closest so far i think
No one wants to transport hydrogen or store it
Yet

Thanks AusCan and HGO2 & agree & will watch with interest as we adopt the rapidly emerging technologies (battery efficiency) from transport/home. It looks an inevitability from where I sit - costs will fall with increased overall demand; technology will improve...just a matter of time. In 5 years, my reliable to date, Beta marine might be ready for a replacement - all sounds a bit like an episode of Thomas the Tank engine (ok I got to many kids!)

It does surprise me that as a generally understood early adopter of new technology, Australian's appear to be lagging in the uptake on electric drive use. I can't find any local SA distributers or local sailboat conversions. Are you out there?

What intrrest me might seem a little crazy
diaphram pumps as propulsion much the same as a manual bilge pump multi inlet ports one for each pump one outlet to smooth things down
Ran by a variety of means hydraulic with acumilators or diect off an engine and or gen
set or maybe just soliniods over springs
Propulsion tubes either side of the keel
Lest moving parts the better
Squids do it why cant we

Forgive the newbie's blasphemy:
www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/10/watch-australias-first-electric-jet-ski-in-action/

One match box full of Nuc energy would power your car over your life time.
How ever to me electric cars are not quiet quite there yet
I used to work very large electric shovels a very large 3 phase high voltage cable into the shovel which powered a motor in turn it was coupled to a DC generator
which powered the complete machine . some have smoko room inside and there filtered and pressurized air inside also which means there spotless inside.
Never really had any problems electrically mostly stress cracks and maintenance to all the moving parts
had two small levers the size of your thumb which would do the digging very accurate levers for a 1960's machine
I found the current series
Now its ac power all the way now

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Concepcion said..
Forgive the newbie's blasphemy:
www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/10/watch-australias-first-electric-jet-ski-in-action/

It probably should be passed on to the professor that there are already electric aeroplanes and drones that can carry men.

this one can be installed with your original diesel engine so you have the option of both

electricyacht.com/product-category/electric-motors/

Heres my bilge pump in action I could see South Ace cruising in to get more Beer after a hard day eat squid

I am happy to declare that I am a Luddite / late adopter of new technology.

I guess that the possible benefit will depend on how you use the boat, but the original post related to replacement for a 28 hp diesel. A bit of basic maths might help.
P
Lets assume you want the ability to do a short costal trip and motor for 8 hours. Assume half power is used, so allow 10 kW power requirement.

If we have a diesel electric system, and do not rely on the batteries to contribute energy then the diesel still needs to contribute 10 kW, so you still have the noise / vibration / global warming etc.

if we assume that we start with fully charged batteries and discharge over the trip, then we need 10 x 8 = 80 kW hours of battery power. One 80 amp hour 12 volt battery holds 80x12/1000 =0.96 kWHr of energy. So you need 80/0.96= 83 12 volt, 80 amp hour batteries.

So that does not work, so try solar to power the batteries. We need 10 kW of power. I have 55 watt solar panels on the boat. For the electric drive I would need to find space for 10x1000/55=181 panels.

So, to summarise, for a 8 hour trip you can have
option 1, diesel generator, but the diesel is the same size as you have now
option 2, charge 83 batteries, 80 amp hours each. Work out how to recharge at the end of the trip
option 3, find space for 181 solar panels.
option 4, breath in the diesel fumes and celebrate the wonders of internal combustion and the massive energy density of fossil fuels for as long as we can!

no doubt my numbers can be questioned, but even if I am only half right the electric option still does not work for a long trip.

I will probably have a closer look when the electric car that can travel from sydney to brisbane on a single charge is released. At that point the technology is probably applicable.

Forget all motors. Pull out your engine, sell it and become a purist, no motor. Use the wind and tide, you will become a better sailor, learn faster about the environment and save money in the process, sounds crazy I know, but have a think about it.

I'm with you LMY its not there yet

Grassie,

Nice idea, I have had a think about it and no thanks.

I use the boat around every second week plus two or more holidays of a couple of weeks per year. Last year the engine did around 100 hours. So under 200 litres of fuel burnt or a couple of tanks for one of those soccer mums 4wds.

There are better targets if you want to save the environment, turn the air con off or down, buy a smaller car, dont use the cloths dryer, put some solar panels on the roof etc etc. We should all do these things.

Select to expand quote

LMY said..
I am happy to declare that I am a Luddite / late adopter of new technology.

I guess that the possible benefit will depend on how you use the boat, but the original post related to replacement for a 28 hp diesel. A bit of basic maths might help.
P
Lets assume you want the ability to do a short costal trip and motor for 8 hours. Assume half power is used, so allow 10 kW power requirement.

If we have a diesel electric system, and do not rely on the batteries to contribute energy then the diesel still needs to contribute 10 kW, so you still have the noise / vibration / global warming etc.

if we assume that we start with fully charged batteries and discharge over the trip, then we need 10 x 8 = 80 kW hours of battery power. One 80 amp hour 12 volt battery holds 80x12/1000 =0.96 kWHr of energy. So you need 80/0.96= 83 12 volt, 80 amp hour batteries.

So that does not work, so try solar to power the batteries. We need 10 kW of power. I have 55 watt solar panels on the boat. For the electric drive I would need to find space for 10x1000/55=181 panels.

So, to summarise, for a 8 hour trip you can have
option 1, diesel generator, but the diesel is the same size as you have now
option 2, charge 83 batteries, 80 amp hours each. Work out how to recharge at the end of the trip
option 3, find space for 181 solar panels.
option 4, breath in the diesel fumes and celebrate the wonders of internal combustion and the massive energy density of fossil fuels for as long as we can!

no doubt my numbers can be questioned, but even if I am only half right the electric option still does not work for a long trip.

I will probably have a closer look when the electric car that can travel from sydney to brisbane on a single charge is released. At that point the technology is probably applicable.

Who the hell is going to motor for 8 hours?
The engines[electric] in hybrid cars and Le mans racers and F1 racers are not the equivalent of the petrol or diesel hp. They are surprisingly small. Check out HG02's videos. Doubt whether you would need 10 KW. The problem at the moment is the controllers. That bit of kit in the video does not look cheap. With the electric hillclimb cars it's not the weight of carrying batteries but the method of controlling a throttle that's the problem.

If you have a large cruising yacht, something 35 foot and above, then a 3 cylinder Kubota driving a 3 phase generator 8KVa will take up the same room as or standard motor except it can be mounted centrally where the weight has the best effect. Wet exhaust and mounted in the sound box they can barely be heard.

The book Sea-Steading by Jerome FitzGerald discusses techniques for
engine-less sailing. It is self published so there was no constraint on rants.

Many have proved that its possible to sail around the world engine-less.
In NSW there are lots of bar crossings which seem too risky to contemplate
with no engine.

Having an electric engine with no fossil fuel burning engine to charge the
batteries is very close to being engine-less. There are 2 scenarios where I
think it can work:

If the boat is berthed, then the batteries can be charged with shore power to
allow motoring a short distance to get in and out of the slip, and for bar
crossings.

As LMY pointed out though it is impractical for coastal cruising when you need
to be back at a certain day (to work to pay for the berth and boat), as if there is
no wind and its too far for the batteries or to row then you are stuck until
the wind picks up.

If you are retired, then I think it can work if you don't need to live to any
schedule. There are reports that the regeneration does not work in practice
on anything other than very fast sailboats:

www.oceannavigator.com/September-2011-1/Are-electric-motors-ready-to-replace-diesels/

Personally I would forget about regeneration and run a folding propeller to
lessen the drag.

The Watt & Sea Hydro-generators are well proven. So say our energy independent sailor
motors for 1 hour at 10kW. She has some solar panels that are sufficient to run the
navigation lights, so all the output from the hydro-generator is devoted to
replacing the charge from the one hour of motoring. Her boat averages 5 knots.
She calculates the time she needs to sail to replace the charge of the 1 hour
of motoring:

recharge_hours = 10kWh / (hydrogenerator_power_at_5_knots * battery_charge_efficiency)
= 10000Wh / (100W * 0.99) = 101 hours

Note: LiFePO4 batteries are 99 to 100% charge efficient.

Which is 4 days and 5 hours.

It seems fine if you hardly ever use the electric motor, since even short
motoring will take days of frugal power usage to replace the charge.

There are turn key electric motor and LiFePO4 battery systems available, which
would be easy to install. I have not researched those as I am guessing they
would be more expensive than a new diesel in Australia.

If you can live without a schedule so that the electric motor is rarely used,
and you have plenty of time to investigate the technical aspects of a diy
electric sailboat motor installation and diy approach to lithium battery bank
construction from LiFePO4 cells, then I think it is cost competitive with a
new diesel engine. The installation looks complex due to the amount of
research and design required for a diy install.

An example of diy pricing, I have no idea of what this kit is like:

www.thunderstruck-ev.com/sevcon-brushless-sailboat-kit-10.5kw.html?sef_rewrite=1

A starter draft article of a diy approach to constructing lithium batteries
from LiFePO4 cells:

www.pbase.com/mainecruising/lifepo4_on_boats

Some pricing on LiFePO4 cells in Australia:

www.evworks.com.au/battery-systems/batteries/

For 48V we need 48V / 3V per cell = 16 cells. LiFePO4 batteries can
be discharged to 80% (0.8) OK so we need 300AHr cells to be able to motor at
10kW for 1 hour. So a battery constructed from 16 * Winston WB-LYP300AHA cells:

www.evworks.com.au/winston-battery-wb-lyp300aha

would give:

300AHr * 48V * 0.8 = 11.52kWh

So ignoring the shipping costs and all the other bits like the
battery management system that is essential to avoid destroying the expensive
Lithium cells, and assuming that solar panels and a hydro-generator would be
used regardless of whether a diesel or electric drive is chosen, then some
back of envelope calculations on the core costs are:

LiFePO4 battery: 16 cells * $540 per cell = $8640
10KW Brushless Sailboat Kit + Curtis ET-134 = ((USD$ 2012 + 138) / 0.70 AUD/USD) * 1.1 (GST) = $3379

8640 + 3379 = $12019

I think the very low maintenance and environmentally friendly approach
may be appealing to some that are lucky enough that they don't need to be
somewhere at a certain time.

I should consider the weight. Say if a diesel installation used with
400Ah LiFePO4 cells. Then we have:

diesel + gearbox + 4 * 400Ah LiFePO4 cells
= 133kg + 4 * 17kg = 201kg

electric_motor + 16 * 300Ah LiFePO4 cells
= 20kg + 16 * 12kg = 212kg

Select to expand quote

Ramona said..

LMY said..
I am happy to declare that I am a Luddite / late adopter of new technology.

I guess that the possible benefit will depend on how you use the boat, but the original post related to replacement for a 28 hp diesel. A bit of basic maths might help.
P
Lets assume you want the ability to do a short costal trip and motor for 8 hours. Assume half power is used, so allow 10 kW power requirement.

If we have a diesel electric system, and do not rely on the batteries to contribute energy then the diesel still needs to contribute 10 kW, so you still have the noise / vibration / global warming etc.

if we assume that we start with fully charged batteries and discharge over the trip, then we need 10 x 8 = 80 kW hours of battery power. One 80 amp hour 12 volt battery holds 80x12/1000 =0.96 kWHr of energy. So you need 80/0.96= 83 12 volt, 80 amp hour batteries.

So that does not work, so try solar to power the batteries. We need 10 kW of power. I have 55 watt solar panels on the boat. For the electric drive I would need to find space for 10x1000/55=181 panels.

So, to summarise, for a 8 hour trip you can have
option 1, diesel generator, but the diesel is the same size as you have now
option 2, charge 83 batteries, 80 amp hours each. Work out how to recharge at the end of the trip
option 3, find space for 181 solar panels.
option 4, breath in the diesel fumes and celebrate the wonders of internal combustion and the massive energy density of fossil fuels for as long as we can!

no doubt my numbers can be questioned, but even if I am only half right the electric option still does not work for a long trip.

I will probably have a closer look when the electric car that can travel from sydney to brisbane on a single charge is released. At that point the technology is probably applicable.

Who the hell is going to motor for 8 hours?
The engines[electric] in hybrid cars and Le mans racers and F1 racers are not the equivalent of the petrol or diesel hp. They are surprisingly small. Check out HG02's videos. Doubt whether you would need 10 KW. The problem at the moment is the controllers. That bit of kit in the video does not look cheap. With the electric hillclimb cars it's not the weight of carrying batteries but the method of controlling a throttle that's the problem.

If you have a large cruising yacht, something 35 foot and above, then a 3 cylinder Kubota driving a 3 phase generator 8KVa will take up the same room as or standard motor except it can be mounted centrally where the weight has the best effect. Wet exhaust and mounted in the sound box they can barely be heard.

Well, Concepcoin seem to have a talent for raising threads that generate good discussion. Well done! Nice boat name also.

I would want a boat that CAN motor for 8 hours. This April we were in Cowan creek for a holliday. We could see the forecast building towards the east coast low so decided to head home to Lake Macquarie. The trip takes around 8 hours, we needed to arrive at the bar to meet a 8 am high tide then a couple of hours on the lake to the marina. I would not want to head out on the trip without knowing that I could average the required speeds, motor, sail, motor sail what ever to average the required 5 knots.

We did the trip, tied up at the marina as the southerly was building. That night winds hit 70 knots, we were safe home in bed. The winds stayed high until well past the time I needed to be back at work, so heading home was the right decision.

With respect to cars, the key difference between a car and a boat is that cars have a wide variance in demand load. Up / down hill, brake for corner, accelerate out etc. The cars use the electrics for things like regenerative braking, and to contribute to the peak loads. The diesel / petrol motor is designed to run very efficiently at a steady load. This is wat produces the energy efficieny. On a boat you have a steady, constant load for relatively long periods, so the diesel cannot average out the peaks. Sorry but I cannot see the efficiency gains from a diesel generator arrangment.

The Kubota generator starts up and runs at 1500 rpm. It's optimized at that. The cruise ships all use Azipods now for fuel efficiency. They have heavy demands on electricity with A/C etc and some of this electricity is used for propulsion. The Azipods are just big saildrives with electric motors in them. Very large, the workers can actually get inside them at sea. This is pretty much the future although with up market yachts we will see more of the electric drives that lift up internally leaving a clean underwater surface. When the drive is lowered the propeller would be of a more efficient drive design so you could motor for 8 hours.

There is some excellent new and inovative ideas out there now

Thanks to all of you, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts & it is amazing how well considered and well informed you all are. Mostly, I appreciate the balance between strong views and accommodation, especially for the newcomer.

I'm returning to 'big' boats, having a childhood banging around a dock. What hasn't changed, be it at a club or through social media, is the support and passion the sailing community have. I know there are times it gets edgy, but the flip side is how sharing your experience, saves us all in time, money, and effort. Thanks again for the welcome.

G'day Rob... You always were Alternate !!
I use an electric motor, just a smaller boat. can push me into a 25 Knot breeze !
Only use it to get the sails up and down but have had to motor home in no wind !
Enjoy
David

These guys make there money out of electric motors for boats, outboards and inboards.

www.aquawatt.at/en/home