Inboard engines and a changing world

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by Idaho

You get yourself ready to live on 40% (or less) of the amount of food you eat.

Crops do not grow on industrial scale farms without lots of diesel. Food does not transport without lots of diesel.

Enjoy this autumn and winter. While watching your kids starve, you can tell them, "Buck up sissy, this is nothing! Wait 'til next year, when there will be zero to eat."


Starvation is a consequence of ignoring reality and wholly believing an insane fantasy.

That is nice... but burning diesel to power a sailboat is not producing food in a meaningful way. So better save the diesel to be used for essential cases and dis-allow diesel on private craft is obvious.

[AKA-None]

Originally Posted by Idaho

The change to electric vehicles is a joke. They are powered by coal and natural gas.

When you see 300 new nuclear reactors being built as quickly as is possible, then electric vehicles (boats, cars, trucks, planes) will finally be sensible.

Until then, its a sick joke that is destroying the world's infrastructure.

I bet civilization will fall before those reactors are built.

And by solar in more than a handful of places

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by newhaul

They are hedging against government regulations and not allowing any more lease sales which by the way is actually in violation of federal laws . The current administration is violation the law .

Now if the government was trying to destroy your business wouldn't you try to save as much capital as possible? And no I'm not seeing any improvement in dividends actually the reverse in the energy sector.

The federal gov’t NH is referring to is the US federal gov’t.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by seandepagnier

That is nice... but burning diesel to power a sailboat is not producing food in a meaningful way. So better save the diesel to be used for essential cases and dis-allow diesel on private craft is obvious.

You would think people on here would be happy. Instead of crotchety. Our sailboats will be worth more. Especially ones that sail well.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Yeah. That’s another one of the reasons. There are several reasons. I said that.

But, petroleum products are about to become a niche market. Like boats. Where everything is expensive. That’s coming fast.

Here’s an article about the dividends for you. It’s a pay wall. But I didn’t find another one quickly.

https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/stor...es-11634220266

Gasoline is under more pressure because that’s what’s going to become the niche. Diesel will probably not be going anywhere for a while. It’s needed for transportation. The amount of it being used probably won’t change much in the near term. Not until they start doing battery swapping or something.

The most difficult niches to replace portable fuels are shipping, aviation and agriculture. Transportation looks like it would be COMPARATIVELY, easy to replace most fossil fuels.

Even if we could replace all personal vehicles with EVs overnight, the existing base load capacity of the electrical grid could recharge overnight. And it would generate less pollution and CO2 than ICEs. The difficulty is at point of charging where charging points need to be installed at residences. Not that bad for folks with their own homes, harder for apartment dwellers where the building owner needs to foot the bill for something they will see little if any return on. For folks that can only park on the street I don’t see a good solution for charging.

In the long run trains will be electrified, trucks/lorries will run on a combination of batteries and overhead catenaries along freeways and major arterials.

For portable fuels it is possible to synthesize ammonia, butanol, gasoline/petrol & diesel from thin air and electricity. Synthesis of all but butanol are are mature technologies but research is needed to scale the processes up and determine the most economical.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by seandepagnier

That is nice... but burning diesel to power a sailboat is not producing food in a meaningful way. So better save the diesel to be used for essential cases and dis-allow diesel on private craft is obvious.

Just makes me want to burn more diesel .

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Idaho

Destroying 60% of the energy infrastructure BEFORE even beginning to build plentiful replacement is insane.

That is what is happening. Oil companies are not reinvesting in production because governments are changing the "rules" to stop those sources.



We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. Ayn Rand.

We can of course ignore Ayn Rand and that’s a good thing

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Idaho

You get yourself ready to live on 40% (or less) of the amount of food you eat.

Crops do not grow on industrial scale farms without lots of diesel. Food does not transport without lots of diesel.

Enjoy this autumn and winter. While watching your kids starve, you can tell them, "Buck up sissy, this is nothing! Wait 'til next year, when there will be zero to eat."


Starvation is a consequence of ignoring reality and wholly believing an insane fantasy.

This type of hyper insane nonsense just devalues a reasonable conversation. The western world is changing its food patterns anyway , with local food , and a move away from dairy /meat

Large commercial Diesel engines will undoubtably be around for several decades even as alternatives are rolled out. Eventually electric powered tractors and so forth will predominate

Suggesting the world will starve is just a Lumbaugh rant style debate. All noise and no reason

[newhaul]

https://www.lbtechreviews.com/news/a...in-switzerland
From the article.
when we get to level 3 of the emergency plan, things suddenly get very nasty for electric car owners. Because not only will shops have to shorten their opening hours, but playing computer games on game consoles will also be banned. Streaming services will be shut down completely and private use of electric cars will be banned. Only in cases of urgent necessity –

Petrol and diesel cars will not be affected by the forthcoming rules. However, the speed limit on Swiss motorways will be lowered from 120 to 100 km/h.

Interesting development.

[Corvidae]

You need to find better news sources that aren't spreading baseless rumors.

That 'plan' was a proposal that wasn't adopted, was never near implementation, and even if it were, was no where near a ban on electric cars.

Don't fall for click bait, it's bad for you.

[Tedd]

When you take regeneration and motor-sailing into consideration, it seems to me that electric might actually make more sense for a cruising boat than for any one else--especially passages. Okay, I'm not a passage-making expert by any means, but it seems as though it would be handy to be able to store energy when you have more wind power than you need and use it later, when you have less wind power than you need. Due to the highly nonlinear nature of hull drag, you'd be making very effective use of the energy.

[Corvidae]

The regen from sailing is enough to keep the lights on, not much else. We'll make 100 watts easily, 500 with good wind. And burn 5000 watts to keep up 5.5 knots of speed on our boat, displacing 12 tons.

Right now electric drive is the best way to go for day sailing boats, and weekend cruisers. It's not just an option, it's a better option than liquid fueled boats. It's cheaper and carries more benefits.

Once you need to motor all day for more than a day though, it's time for liquid power sources. To put it in perspective, we burn 40 to 70 kwh a day while motoring. Our 1280w of solar will put out 9kwh in peak summer on a great day. The rest comes from a 12kw generator. Solar just isn't going to make up that deficit.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Corvidae

The regen from sailing is enough to keep the lights on, not much else. We'll make 100 watts easily, 500 with good wind. And burn 5000 watts to keep up 5.5 knots of speed on our boat, displacing 12 tons.

Right now electric drive is the best way to go for day sailing boats, and weekend cruisers. It's not just an option, it's a better option than liquid fueled boats. It's cheaper and carries more benefits.

Once you need to motor all day for more than a day though, it's time for liquid power sources. To put it in perspective, we burn 40 to 70 kwh a day while motoring. Our 1280w of solar will put out 9kwh in peak summer on a great day. The rest comes from a 12kw generator. Solar just isn't going to make up that deficit.

If you expect to motor at 5.5kt then yeah, you need an ICE with liquid fuel. If you can accept motoring at 2.5-3.0Kt you will need 750-1200W to motor and long distance EP becomes possible.

[Tedd]

Originally Posted by Adelie

If you expect to motor at 5.5kt then yeah, you need an ICE with liquid fuel. If you can accept motoring at 2.5-3.0Kt you will need 750-1200W to motor and long distance EP becomes possible.

Also motor sailing, where you'd need even less power. For a smaller boat (24-26 feet), only about a hundred watts would double your speed on a very light wind day.

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Personally I like the idea of going electric. I think it has a lot of advantages over dino-power. Not just the possible lower impact on the environment, but also because electric engines are simpler, quieter, and don't require all those volatile and stinky fluids to be pumped around.

If amp storage and solar generating technology was both say 100 or 1000 fold better, I'd definitely repower, even with the cost being twice as high. We're getting there, but right now I don't see magnitude leaps in battery storage or generating capacity. It keeps getting incrementally better, but my sense is we're going to need a fundamentally different technology for amp storage to really reach the energy densities I would want.



I'm all for going "green" but, as you know , the benefits gained from shifting to electric engines largely depend on how the electricity is generated and delivered.

If we just move the dino-juice out of the vehicles (and boats), but continue to produce most of our electricity via dino-powered generators, then the "green" benefits are modest at best. If we can also shift our bulk electricity production to renewables or nuclear (a more viable option), then it likely makes environmental sense.

For example, fossil fuels still accounts for 63.6% of the USA's electric generating needs. Nuclear is 19.4% with all renewables coming in at 16.9%. I bet Canadian numbers aren't far off. So buying an electric car, at least in North America, does little to improve the overall carbon footprint. It just shifts the source a bit.

BTW, I also looked long and hard at the various electric outboards for my dingy. I borrowed a Torqueedo (the leading retailer at the time). It worked great to move my little portabote as fast as I needed. But once again, the range, amp-storage (battery) and recharging challenges drove me back to dino-juice. It's just hard to beat fossil fuel's energy density.

Jeez Mike- Nuke engines are getting smaller ....