Quote:
Originally Posted by Kettlewell
Think of it this way, if your boat's insurance survey indicated you had a kerosene stove and afterwards you changed it to propane and blew up the boat, do you think your insurance company would say "no problem!"
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If installed according to normal safe practices...absolutely. The insurance companies don't dictate how you outfit your
boat. And the odds are very small that a properly installed
propane system would cause the demise of your boat if properly installed. The myriad of other reasons are far more likely. Not unlike the guy who sailed into our anchorage tonight surrounded by
reefs at dark...talented
skipper...he got away with it this time in fine form. But he was one problem away from disaster.
Im surprised Boeing is having these problems on one hand because of the obvious reasons. And because the initial adoption of NiCAD in airplanes had some similar issues. They should have known better. But on the other hand, it's very hard to change a design once it's in place for an aircraft because of the regulatory
reviews. So it ends up waiting for problems to occur that force the rethinking. We say in the business, changes are a result of blood.... And like someone else mentioned, much of this was originally engineered years ago. I can't believe today they would not use
LiFePO4, based on the stability, cycle life and shelf life. But I don't think commercially available
LiFePO4 prismatic cells were available during the design timeframe. If they were, it would be from Chinese manufacturers, small in size and probably without the ability to produce, or certify satisfactorily the needed
documentation for an aircraft design. Or the business size to convince Boeing they would be around forever in the supply chain.
Genasun has
sold LiFePO4 for several years now. Mastervolt has recently joined in. Others will follow. No boats have burned in the existing installs. One will eventually, but so have many using mature
batteries. If you are not interested, or don't see the benefits, don't install them. But don't rain on the parade without more concrete evidence there are significant unaddressed issues. if you see them, point them out. But Boeings failure is not universal.