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17 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Tell me old bean.......what exactly does the " Whispergen " run on?  and a TON of batteries..........that will be sooooooo cheap, have you seen the recent battery threads? :P

The whispergen runs on Kero 30 p a litre and its for hot water in the summer unless I have enough power in the solar then I would use an immersion heater the full traction batteries will be £1200 with all connects, tails, bolts and a watering kit.

I have acquired a rayburn with backboiler for the winter which also uses kero, allegedly it uses 1.7 gallons per 24 hours based on 22 hours idling 2 hours cooking [£2.40 a day] hardly worth bothering with coal at that price?

Anyway its just me having a play I have the electric motor and gubbins, and at the moment 4 x trojans for trying it out before committing to the tractions

Edited by peterboat
cockup!
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On 07/03/2017 at 20:35, mrsmelly said:

Tell me old bean.......what exactly does the " Whispergen " run on?  and a TON of batteries..........that will be sooooooo cheap, have you seen the recent battery threads? :P

 

Tut tut Tim. Skoolboy error you're making here, confusing saving the planet with saving money. The Whispergen is a "micro-CHP" device which according to the govt is so amazingly efficient that as you run it, your diesel tank gets fuller and the more you run it, the more saving of the world you will have done. (All this is according to the govt and the "Gas Engineer" comic someone keeps sending me.)

In reality it is actually quite a good idea but not for reasons of economy. Such a Good Idea I'm installing one in my own bote now, which Peter helpfully acquired for me. The only problem is they are SO good, the firm making them went bust. ;)

Edited by Mike the Boilerman
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11 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Tut tut Tim. Skoolboy error you're making here, confusing saving the planet with saving money. The Whispergen is a "micro-CHP" device which according to the govt is so amazingly efficient that as you run it, your diesel tank gets fuller and the more you run it, the more saving of the world you will have done. (All this is according to the govt and the "Gas Engineer" comic someone keeps sending me.)

In reality it is actually quite a good idea but not for reasons of economy. Such a Good Idea I'm installing one in my own bote now, which Peter helpfully acquired for me. The only problem is they are SO good, the firm making them went bust. ;)

Only after an earthquake in NZ destroyed the factory!! there was nothing left of the manufacturing plant, the spanish natural gas version was in production for years and years after that

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19 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Tell me old bean.......what exactly does the " Whispergen " run on?  and a TON of batteries..........that will be sooooooo cheap, have you seen the recent battery threads? :P

What exactly is your point when you keep mentioning that generators run on diesel? Most boats are going to have a generator anyway and a decent sized battery bank. It was established in an earlier thread that 2000Ah of 12v batteries is ample for a typical day's cruising without needing the generator. So that might be £1000-£1500 more than average battery capacity on a boat. A suitable motor, controller and ancillaries can be sourced for around £3000. The motor is about the size of a shoe box so there's space saving to be considered. As well as that, there's the possibility of using solar, wind, shoreline etc. Then there's servicing and maintenance. I fully respect others in choosing to have an engine whether it be because of the tradition or ease of use, or for whatever reason. I looked at the options and couldn't see a strong enough argument against electric.

I read a quote a few days ago and wrote it down because it rang so true:

"Whatever falsehoods each of us currently believes are necessarily invisible to us"

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17 minutes ago, stegra said:

What exactly is your point when you keep mentioning that generators run on diesel? Most boats are going to have a generator anyway and a decent sized battery bank. It was established in an earlier thread that 2000Ah of 12v batteries is ample for a typical day's cruising without needing the generator. So that might be £1000-£1500 more than average battery capacity on a boat. A suitable motor, controller and ancillaries can be sourced for around £3000. The motor is about the size of a shoe box so there's space saving to be considered. As well as that, there's the possibility of using solar, wind, shoreline etc. Then there's servicing and maintenance. I fully respect others in choosing to have an engine whether it be because of the tradition or ease of use, or for whatever reason. I looked at the options and couldn't see a strong enough argument against electric.

I read a quote a few days ago and wrote it down because it rang so true:

"Whatever falsehoods each of us currently believes are necessarily invisible to us"

But what about the sound chip, amplifier and speakers to make the nice noise

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34 minutes ago, stegra said:

What exactly is your point when you keep mentioning that generators run on diesel? Most boats are going to have a generator anyway and a decent sized battery bank. It was established in an earlier thread that 2000Ah of 12v batteries is ample for a typical day's cruising without needing the generator. So that might be £1000-£1500 more than average battery capacity on a boat. A suitable motor, controller and ancillaries can be sourced for around £3000. The motor is about the size of a shoe box so there's space saving to be considered. As well as that, there's the possibility of using solar, wind, shoreline etc. Then there's servicing and maintenance. I fully respect others in choosing to have an engine whether it be because of the tradition or ease of use, or for whatever reason. I looked at the options and couldn't see a strong enough argument against electric.

I read a quote a few days ago and wrote it down because it rang so true:

"Whatever falsehoods each of us currently believes are necessarily invisible to us"

Electric propulsion is great providing people realise it is equaly as polluting as Diesel because the lectrickery has to  be generated somehow and fossil fuels are slightly lol more efficient than solar for doing the job especialy in january. Its like electric cars drive 150 miles then park up for half a day whilst charging again or have an internal combustion engine in yer prius which in reality is what propels the car. I moor forty feet from a railway station platform and a train has just stopped for a minute and as it set off there is a humungous noise from the diesel engine revving like hell to fulfil the initial boost of leccy to turn the leccy motors to move the train. Leccy motors are awesome and very powerfull for their size but green? absolutely no way.

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1 hour ago, mrsmelly said:

Electric propulsion is great providing people realise it is equaly as polluting as Diesel because the lectrickery has to  be generated somehow and fossil fuels are slightly lol more efficient than solar for doing the job especialy in january. Its like electric cars drive 150 miles then park up for half a day whilst charging again or have an internal combustion engine in yer prius which in reality is what propels the car. I moor forty feet from a railway station platform and a train has just stopped for a minute and as it set off there is a humungous noise from the diesel engine revving like hell to fulfil the initial boost of leccy to turn the leccy motors to move the train. Leccy motors are awesome and very powerfull for their size but green? absolutely no way.

Tim. wind, hydro, solar and nuclear are all in there as well no fossil fuels in sight. The speed with which wind farms are appearing surprises me, times are changing no more of that nasty coal, oil and gas it going to be good clean nuclear and other stuff:rolleyes:

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2 hours ago, stegra said:

What exactly is your point when you keep mentioning that generators run on diesel? Most boats are going to have a generator anyway and a decent sized battery bank. It was established in an earlier thread that 2000Ah of 12v batteries is ample for a typical day's cruising without needing the generator. So that might be £1000-£1500 more than average battery capacity on a boat. A suitable motor, controller and ancillaries can be sourced for around £3000. The motor is about the size of a shoe box so there's space saving to be considered. As well as that, there's the possibility of using solar, wind, shoreline etc. Then there's servicing and maintenance. I fully respect others in choosing to have an engine whether it be because of the tradition or ease of use, or for whatever reason. I looked at the options and couldn't see a strong enough argument against electric.

I read a quote a few days ago and wrote it down because it rang so true:

"Whatever falsehoods each of us currently believes are necessarily invisible to us"

Firmly like me in the electric camp. I realise the limitations but have no intentions of traveling every day so the sun will do its stuff on its day off also it will charge whilst on the move from the solar panels. As a backup I will have the whispergen and of course if I am on the broads their are charging points so I could just plug it in..................

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8 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

Electric propulsion is great providing people realise it is equaly as polluting as Diesel because the lectrickery has to  be generated somehow and fossil fuels are slightly lol more efficient than solar for doing the job especialy in january. Its like electric cars drive 150 miles then park up for half a day whilst charging again or have an internal combustion engine in yer prius which in reality is what propels the car. I moor forty feet from a railway station platform and a train has just stopped for a minute and as it set off there is a humungous noise from the diesel engine revving like hell to fulfil the initial boost of leccy to turn the leccy motors to move the train. Leccy motors are awesome and very powerfull for their size but green? absolutely no way.

I think you are confusing "electric" with "diesel electric", although even then the leccy has to be generated somewhere and if we run all our cars etc on it then more will need to be generated. My initial question was about an all-electric boat, although I'm not sure that is practical for extended cruising the way I sometimes do it, e.g Whittington to Fenny Compton in three days

The hybrid I drive regularly (a Toyota Yaris) has a much smaller petrol engine than one would expect, and I guess the same can be done with a hybrid boat. Also, could it be LPG-Electric rather than Diesel electric (I'm guessing petrol-electric on boats is a no-no)

With regards to cars, I suspect someone will develop a system that is superior to carting lots of batteries round, and that electric cars are a temporary staging post on our way to "the next big thing"

 

 

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12 hours ago, stegra said:

I'm going with electric drive. I can't possibly see how an efficient electric motor even if it was only used with a decent generator can be less efficient than a clunky old diesel engine. Anyone suggesting that electric drive is only suitable for small craft might want to consider this diesel electric tiddler:

Ace.jpg

 

 

I'm not here to evangelize to those who cannot be converted but for anyone who is interested in electric propulsion there is a dedicated club:

http://www.eboat.org.uk/

"I can't possibly see how" is not an argument, it is an admission of ignorance. Let me explain. Usually there is a gearbox between engine and prop shaft, due to friction losses you get less power out than you put in. If you put a generator, batteries, speed controller and motor in place of the gearbox, each stage has it's own losses which added together far exceed the losses in a gearbox, therefore it requires more fuel to get the same work done at the propshaft because the drive chain is less efficient.

using mains power to charge adds transmission and charger losses and is even less efficient, but will be "greener" because of the input to the grid from clean sources and the fact that power station chimneys have better scrubbers than a boat exhaust.

Don't confuse efficient with effective.

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Well, the Toyota Prius is beaten on motorway mpg by the Honda Civic 1.6 DTEC and matched by the Skoda Octavia Greenline III and Volkswagen Golf Bluemotion.  In traffic, the Prius can get 70mpg.  This makes me think that a hybrid would not do as well as a gearbox on the canals.  I suppose you could run the diesel at full load for a couple of hours and cruise in silence for, maybe 6 hours, but at a big capital cost.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/toyota/prius/mpg

Edited by mross
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46 minutes ago, mross said:

Well, the Toyota Prius is beaten on motorway mpg by the Honda Civic 1.6 DTEC and matched by the Skoda Octavia Greenline III and Volkswagen Golf Bluemotion.  In traffic, the Prius can get 70mpg.  This makes me think that a hybrid would not do as well as a gearbox on the canals.  I suppose you could run the diesel at full load for a couple of hours and cruise in silence for, maybe 6 hours, but at a big capital cost.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/toyota/prius/mpg

I think we are all agreed to varying degrees that lectric motors are awesome, we only have to look at the Tesla to see how much performance can be achieved by millionaires!!

Peter sort of hits the nail on the head when he states waiting around for a day for solar to recharge batteries ( It would be a hell of a lot of days with todays weather ) so it can be done but we are nowhere near being able to move vehicles/boats around on a daily user basis without the national grid being plugged in or some form of fossil fueled generator.

What is a killer I would think for most boat owners would be the at least double the instalation costs the whole kit would/does cost over diesel. One day yes but in 2017 it aint happening.

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53 minutes ago, mross said:

Well, the Toyota Prius is beaten on motorway mpg by the Honda Civic 1.6 DTEC and matched by the Skoda Octavia Greenline III and Volkswagen Golf Bluemotion.  In traffic, the Prius can get 70mpg.

The Jaguar XE diesel does 69mpg on the combined cycle. Many users are quoting high 70's on the various Jag forums. The Prius might be fashionable but it's nothing special. 

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8 minutes ago, WotEver said:

The Jaguar XE diesel does 69mpg on the combined cycle. Many users are quoting high 70's on the various Jag forums. The Prius might be fashionable but it's nothing special. 

The Prius is also " Pig ugly " :D

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1 hour ago, mross said:

Well, the Toyota Prius is beaten on motorway mpg by the Honda Civic 1.6 DTEC and matched by the Skoda Octavia Greenline III and Volkswagen Golf Bluemotion.  In traffic, the Prius can get 70mpg.  This makes me think that a hybrid would not do as well as a gearbox on the canals.  I suppose you could run the diesel at full load for a couple of hours and cruise in silence for, maybe 6 hours, but at a big capital cost.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/toyota/prius/mpg

 

6 minutes ago, WotEver said:

The Jaguar XE diesel does 69mpg on the combined cycle. Many users are quoting high 70's on the various Jag forums. The Prius might be fashionable but it's nothing special. 

Yes but diesel cars are killing people and the down on diesel has started with £10 to go to London other cities will follow soon shortly, after that car makers will stop making them, because what is the point of having a car that is supposed to save you money costing you more? One of my customers had a audi 2 litre TDI it broke [oil pump drive very common] we fixed it at great expense he sold it bought a Lexus Hybrid and is saving money over the Audi Annual diesel sales are starting to go down already in a couple of years people will be daubing red on your doors for running a diesel.

As for slow charging most of the latest electric cars can charge up 80% in half an hour although home charging is an overnight thing but who cares? if it only costs pennies instead of pounds

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2 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

I think you are confusing "electric" with "diesel electric", although even then the leccy has to be generated somewhere and if we run all our cars etc on it then more will need to be generated. My initial question was about an all-electric boat, although I'm not sure that is practical for extended cruising the way I sometimes do it, e.g Whittington to Fenny Compton in three days

The hybrid I drive regularly (a Toyota Yaris) has a much smaller petrol engine than one would expect, and I guess the same can be done with a hybrid boat. Also, could it be LPG-Electric rather than Diesel electric (I'm guessing petrol-electric on boats is a no-no)

With regards to cars, I suspect someone will develop a system that is superior to carting lots of batteries round, and that electric cars are a temporary staging post on our way to "the next big thing"

 

 

We converted a prius to LPG to years ago worked well, and cheap to run did thousand of miles as taxi, very clean instead of killing people like diesels do

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7 minutes ago, peterboat said:

We converted a prius to LPG to years ago worked well, and cheap to run did thousand of miles as taxi, very clean instead of killing people like diesels do

 

Presumably a petrol Prius then. Diesels are notoriously difficult to convert to LPG as they have no sparkery.

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15 minutes ago, peterboat said:

... the Audi Annual diesel sales are starting to go down already in a couple of years people will be daubing red on your doors for running a diesel.

That's an interesting perspective. Do you have any published figures to back it up? The latest information that I've read (January of this year) stated that all of the major car manufacturers are currently ramping up diesel car production because they are by far their most popular cars. 

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20 minutes ago, peterboat said:

We converted a prius to LPG to years ago worked well, and cheap to run did thousand of miles as taxi, very clean instead of killing people like diesels do

The funny thing for me is I and others have since day one stated that diesel engines are worse polluters than petrol, you only have to be behind one when it vainly tries to accelerate and breath in the cloud of black smoke to understand that. They are greatly improved but so are petrol engines and a diesel will never been as refined as petrol.

Succesive governments lulled people into a false sense of security in buying them and now are bringing the hammer down. I have no sympathy though as the only reason to own a diesel was they do more mpg thus cost the polluter less  money to run. I confess that I have tried diesel ownership on 3 occasions in the last thirty odd years and still end up buying v8 petrol. Life is simply too short for diesel in a car.

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20 minutes ago, peterboat said:

As for slow charging most of the latest electric cars can charge up 80% in half an hour although home charging is an overnight thing but who cares?

I care. Where would the extra 30% electricity generation come from if everyone drove electric vehicles?

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There is a lot of development work going on at the moment regarding diesel engines, such as Liquid Pistons rotary engines from the states. and Cox powertrain in the UK are developing a diesel outboard just to name a few, Most of the big players are all developing new engines, it will be interesting to see what the diesel engine market will be like in a few years.

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2 hours ago, Sir Nibble said:

"I can't possibly see how" is not an argument, it is an admission of ignorance. Let me explain. Usually there is a gearbox between engine and prop shaft, due to friction losses you get less power out than you put in. If you put a generator, batteries, speed controller and motor in place of the gearbox, each stage has it's own losses which added together far exceed the losses in a gearbox, therefore it requires more fuel to get the same work done at the propshaft because the drive chain is less efficient.

using mains power to charge adds transmission and charger losses and is even less efficient, but will be "greener" because of the input to the grid from clean sources and the fact that power station chimneys have better scrubbers than a boat exhaust.

Don't confuse efficient with effective.

Well a typical boat engines aren't likely to be modern efficient common rail diesel types like those found in new vehicles; in fact they are likely to be some of the least efficient engines still in everyday operation. Obtaining the optimum performance from an internal combustion engine over a variety speeds and loads is not straightforward even with electronic mapping found in vehicles. If a diesel engine only has to charge batteries, its efficiency can be optimised to suit a single situation. Moreover, it need only be run for a fraction of the time whilst cruising. Constantly running an old fuel-thirsty 60hp diesel engine when less than 5hp is needed to cruise at 4mph on static water is inefficient. Thanks for the lesson.

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1 hour ago, I Spartacus said:

There is a lot of development work going on at the moment regarding diesel engines, such as Liquid Pistons rotary engines from the states. and Cox powertrain in the UK are developing a diesel outboard just to name a few, Most of the big players are all developing new engines, it will be interesting to see what the diesel engine market will be like in a few years.

This is an interesting article about a Routemaster bus (built 1962) being re-engined by Cummins and is now able to meet the ULEZ standards for London planned to take effect from 2018. http://blog.cumminsengines.com/2016/06/23/iconic-london-red-double-decker-bus-goes-green-with-cummins/

The diesel is not dead and buried yet.

Tony

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