Recreational Boating & the Green Movement

[OldDan1943]

I still remember the 'green movement' in the 60s. Free sex, orgies, smoking pot, more free sex.
Now, I am way too old.

 

[Benthic2]

A few things to think about:

Toyota and Honda are already selling hydrogen fuel cell cars and there is a network of hydrogen refueling stations all over California.

Tesla has already taken orders for over 500 of its electric semi truck that has a 500 mile range and can be recharged to 80% capacity in 30 minutes.

France has had a tidal power generating plant operating since 1966.

New technology is NEVER cost effective....until it is. Camcorders used to be the size of a briefcase and cost $1000. The first handheld calculators only did 4 basic function and cost over $500, daguerrotypes to digital pictures, reel to reel to MP3, etc.

 

[SteveK]

You seem to be aware of a few of the facts. I am happy to supply some more:
In theory any state, including CA, could become energy self-sufficient, but there is no
plan or need to do so. As I understand it, the goal is 'zero carbon' by 2045.

25 years is a long time and at the current rate of renewable energy growth that is an
attainable goal for the generation side, if not sooner with technology improvements.

25 years is a lot of time to improve both transmission and storage capacity also.
This also holds true for the adjoining states and Provinces that will be our future
customers of the ever increasing generation capacity unless they upgrade theirs, too.

It seems to be the norm for a certain group to make assumptions about future
events based on years-old data remaining the status quo.
What I do instead is apply the most recent changes as predictive to future changes,
keeping in mind that people tend to act in their own best interest in the long run.

Finally, you and others use 'California dreamer' as a derisive term. But it isn't to me.
On the contrary, no progress occurs without first having been a dream in the mind of
an innovator. California is and will remain the economic powerhouse of the hemisphere.

KY. Best wishes for your children in 25 years.
Don't know if you missed the intent of my post or like usual you are just contrary.

California depends on outside sources today for 75% of it's electricity but has grandiose plans to be all electric in 25 years. That is an awful lot of current needs electricity to overcome in itself, never mind adding an electric car in every driveway.

That is where the dreamer part comes in, not to be confused with anyone having a dream and working on a plan to achieve it.
BTW. How is that fast train project coming?

BC is selling CA our surplus Hydro and gas. But we also have a plan to go green with only electric cars in the downtown lower mainland. Guess what. we can do that by not selling our surplus.

 

[mvweebles]

Original poster here. The thread got off topic and we appreciate your reply to our original questions. We had not considered the Med. We'll do some reading on the subject.

Interesting the many assumptions we've read so far about us but we'll try to clarify for those addressing our original post. We're both 49 and planning to retire between 52 and 55 pending our health insurance coverage options prior to medicare. We do a lot of boating now on the Chesapeake in a 35' express with twin crusaders. Our concerns aren't focused on saving the world or going green. We like to think we do our part. We would love to cruise thru our 50's and longer and were wondering what peoples thoughts were on the impact of this energy shift and recreational boating. We will have a comfortable retirement financially but don't want to put a large chunk of cash into a boat if an experienced community like this felt the future of recreational boating was bleak. That's all, nothing political and not trying to stir things up. Still interested in your thoughts though and thanks for an interesting thread so far!

Hydrocarbons have incredible energy density. The size of a battery bank needed to equal 5 gals of diesel or gasoline is amazing.

Because of battery technology, the use-cases for many power applications are transforming. But there will always be a need for sustained high power applications such as airplanes and commercial freight (train, OTR truck, and ship). There is no viable path now or in the horizon to run a commercial fishing boat with its massive generators powering massive hydraulic systems on anything but hydrocarbons.

Diesel will get more expensive over time and perhaps less available as the number of use cases requiring high density power sources are displaced. But it's here to stay for a long time.

Buy your boat. Have a good time. Congrats on retiring early if you manage to pull it off.

Peter

 

[FF]

"
New technology is NEVER cost effective....until it is. Camcorders used to be the size of a briefcase and cost $1000. The first handheld calculators only did 4 basic function and cost over $500, daguerrotypes to digital pictures, reel to reel to MP3, etc."


These tech advances were caused by the tech becoming better and cheaper , so were market driven.

The Green tech is mostly tax money blowing in the wind ,

Think Solindra 3/4 billion from taxpayers ,for nothing.

Many lifestyle advances like LED lights are consumer driven ,sadly diesel engines are at the end of 130 years of improvement , co generation still has some little way to improve.

 

[OldDan1943]

BC is selling CA our surplus Hydro and gas. But we also have a plan to go green with only electric cars in the downtown lower mainland. Guess what. we can do that by not selling our surplus.

That will come as a shock to CA Maybe CA will declare war in Canada?
demanding power, just as the do with fresh water for other states and farmers.
Years ago, one or two of the many CA fools wanted to take fresh water from the Great Lakes system. As CA forces industries out of their state by taxation, the more fresh water will become available

 

[Codger2]

Compare that to 8 hours of "charging"/fueling in our 30-year old diesels. That amount of time gets me several years of cruising (vs 1 day) and well over 10,000 miles (vs 33 miles) on a boat that weighs 10 X the 22 foot Duffy.

You left out the hundreds of hours doing maintenance on your boat to get to 10,000 miles of cruising. Filter changes, zinc changes, cutler bearings, bilge cleaning, time on the hard, etc. My boat is basically maintenance free except for changing the propeller zinc which the diver does. I will be on the hard for several hours to have the bottom repainted every 2 years, not days! Monthly things like vacuuming the interior, checking the electrical circuits, polishing the interior polycarbonate windows, washing the exterior & polishing the exterior windows, cleaning the bottom, are all done through the Duffy care program for $1900.00/year! For my boat's mission which is defined as bay cruising only, up to 6.5 hours per day, similar size boats powered by gas or diesel engines don't even come close when one considers the man hours of work required to achieve the same cruising time. I have owned 10 boats over 30' long since 1995. 1 gasser and 9 diesel powered boats. The hours to keep them in top shape whether hired out or done by myself were countless!
No, your numbers are sorely lacking real world values when total man hours are required to maintain a boat in safe cruising condition. Oh, I left out the cost of recharging every night....it's in the slip fee every month!

 

[OldDan1943]

Hmmmm, gotta wake up mate to get to the head at night. LOL

It is an interesting concept. Not for me but, sound ideal for you.
How long is the mattress?

Just add a single portable propane burner and live out of a duffle bag. Of course, you have to figure out how to wash up the dishes and you.

Let us know when you are going to do the loop.

 

[ksanders]

You left out the hundreds of hours doing maintenance on your boat to get to 10,000 miles of cruising. Filter changes, zinc changes, cutler bearings, bilge cleaning, time on the hard, etc. My boat is basically maintenance free except for changing the propeller zinc which the diver does. I will be on the hard for several hours to have the bottom repainted every 2 years, not days! Monthly things like vacuuming the interior, checking the electrical circuits, polishing the interior polycarbonate windows, washing the exterior & polishing the exterior windows, cleaning the bottom, are all done through the Duffy care program for $1900.00/year! For my boat's mission which is defined as bay cruising only, up to 6.5 hours per day, similar size boats powered by gas or diesel engines don't even come close when one considers the man hours of work required to achieve the same cruising time. I have owned 10 boats over 30' long since 1995. 1 gasser and 9 diesel powered boats. The hours to keep them in top shape whether hired out or done by myself were countless!
No, your numbers are sorely lacking real world values when total man hours are required to maintain a boat in safe cruising condition. Oh, I left out the cost of recharging every night....it's in the slip fee every month!

Your Duffy looks like the perfect boat for you at your stage of life, with your cruising goals. I see no problem with it being powered exclusively by batteries. Actually I think electric power for you was a good choice!

I'm a bit different and probably closer to the trawler "norm" at my stage in life with my cruising goals.

I/we typically leave port in our boat, travel between two and three hundred miles, and do not make it to another Port for a week or more.

We generally burn something over 150 gallons of diesel to do this. That is about 5400 kilowatt hours worth of diesel. There is no way we could store that kind of energy on our boat except for diesel fuel.

Battery powered boats and cars have their place, but until energy storage technology is developed to match hydrocarbons energy density and until electricity comes down in cost to the 8 cents a killowatt hour of diesel costs me today then the choice is pretty easy to make. Actually there is no other choice today. Maybe...hopefully tomorrow, but not today, and not in the boating lifetime of this old guy.

 

[KnotYet]

KY. Best wishes for your children in 25 years.
...

I think if everyone was forced to limit their dreams and goals to what is practical and currently achievable, we might still be driving around in horse drawn buggies.

Don't forget that Kennedy decided to go to the moon back when that was impossible, too.

SV, it's not really fair to divebums to keep rebutting your off-point jabs at a state
you and others are seem to be so threatened by.
I'm not in charge here and the most cursory glance at published data shows that the
CA energy plans are more than feasible even with current technology.
Like many critics you see past failure as a negative when what it really does is enable future success.
Thank you for wishing my children well whatever the intent really was.
They love where they live and that makes me grateful that I chose this great state!

 

[Simi 60]

Nice tender (-;
But doubt it has enough space for you to do that red man dance

 

[AZ2Loop]

You left out the hundreds of hours doing maintenance on your boat to get to 10,000 miles of cruising. Filter changes, zinc changes, cutler bearings, bilge cleaning, time on the hard, etc. My boat is basically maintenance free except for changing the propeller zinc which the diver does. I will be on the hard for several hours to have the bottom repainted every 2 years, not days! Monthly things like vacuuming the interior, checking the electrical circuits, polishing the interior polycarbonate windows, washing the exterior & polishing the exterior windows, cleaning the bottom, are all done through the Duffy care program for $1900.00/year! For my boat's mission which is defined as bay cruising only, up to 6.5 hours per day, similar size boats powered by gas or diesel engines don't even come close when one considers the man hours of work required to achieve the same cruising time. I have owned 10 boats over 30' long since 1995. 1 gasser and 9 diesel powered boats. The hours to keep them in top shape whether hired out or done by myself were countless!
No, your numbers are sorely lacking real world values when total man hours are required to maintain a boat in safe cruising condition. Oh, I left out the cost of recharging every night....it's in the slip fee every month!

Codger, you have found the perfect boat for you. However, I think you missed the point of my post. I was not suggesting that an all electric boat is anything short of a great fit in your scenario.

I was simply pointing out the differences in time (not man hours, but actual time) it takes to recharge batteries vs "recharge" our old diesels; while also pointing out how little energy that 8-hour "recharge" provides vs a few gallons of diesel, collected in a few minutes. The point was not that electric power is "bad", but the current technology is far from a replacement for the typical Trawler Forum user's kind of cruising. It was a way of quantifying the gap as it currently stands.

The energy stored in the batteries after 8 hours of charging is nothing compared to the energy stored in a few gallons of diesel. That is relevant because the OP was asking about the effects of the green movement and how it relates to the type of boat he will likely purchase -- a 40+ foot boat for extended cruising while living aboard. Diesel will likely be the preferred source of energy for such applications for the foreseeable future.

 

[AusCan]

AusC,
Has your cost for juice changed with the transition?

Best regards.

The cost has of electricity in Australia is high, but not due to renewable energy. The biggest reason is the cost of natural gas has sky-rocketed due to Australian oil & gas companies over estimating their gas reserves and over-selling LNG to Japan, China and Korea on long term contracts. (Our LNG exports are now equal to Qatar's)

What little is left for the Aussie domestic market to run the natural gas fired power stations now costs a fortune and has forced up the price of electricity. Overall in Australia, natural gas power stations supply 21% of electricity, which is the same for wind and solar combined.

The electricity price is slowly dropping again with more solar and wind power coming on line reducing the demand for natural gas.

 

[AusCan]

I still remember the 'green movement' in the 60s. Free sex, orgies, smoking pot, more free sex.
Now, I am way too old.

Well, you could probably still smoke pot.

 

[Alaskaflyer]

Yes - it is ok to be a dreamer. Innovation would be stagnate without it.

Here in the state of South Australia, we are now producing over 60% of electricity by wind and solar. This has been increasing by about 7% per year. 5 years ago the general consensus was that 40% was the maximum possible, and 60% needed to be gas/coal/nuclear for a stable load base. The dreamers pushed on.

We installed the world's largest battery (although California has now installed a larger one) and tweaked the control systems to continue to push the boundaries. Our last coal fired power station is now shut down. The natural gas fired power stations are reducing output, and all new power systems will be solar, wind, or storage.

The largest battery in the world by far is in Virginia, though China is building one that will be larger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station

 

[OldDan1943]

Well, you could probably still smoke pot.

I dont think so. I am still to beautiful to go to jail.

 

[OldDan1943]

And then, there was a proposal to capture part of the water from a power producing dam during the day and when the electrical demand was less, presumably at night, pump the captured water back up into the reservoir to be reused when demand was high.
I never heard of this plan being implemented.

 

[KnotYet]

The largest battery in the world by far is in Virginia, though China is building one that will be larger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station

This smart use of off-the-shelf hardware is a good match with renewable energy's
cyclic production capacity, too.

 

[KnotYet]

I dont think so. I am still to beautiful to go to jail.

Shucks, Florida passed Amendment 2 in 2016; I think it allows for 'medicinal use'...

 

[Alaskaflyer]

And then, there was a proposal to capture part of the water from a power producing dam during the day and when the electrical demand was less, presumably at night, pump the captured water back up into the reservoir to be reused when demand was high.
I never heard of this plan being implemented.

That's the technology I posted just above. That one's been in use since the mid-eighties. The efficiency loss is not much higher than the new Tesla giant battery installations.

The problem comes in finding the right topography, it can't be put everywhere. At least for an installation that stores thousands of MWh of capacity. A smaller scale solution would be more possible, but then I wonder if efficiency suffers.

 

[markpierce]

My California electricity bill has increased 60 percent in the last three years, but not due to increased usage. One of several reasons California is losing self-supporting residents.

Have Tesla stock-price gains? Thank the taxpayers' subsidies.

 

[KnotYet]

My California electricity bill has increased 60 percent in the last three years, but not due to increased usage. One of several reasons California is losing self-supporting residents.

Have Tesla stock-price gains? Thank the taxpayers' subsidies.

Oh, yeah! At least it's going toward a good cause.
But seriously markpierce, do you really think anyone moved away due to their light bill??

 

[localboy]

So much optimism here. It’s almost like some of you don’t realize what the future holds.

 

[Benthic2]

My California electricity bill has increased 60 percent in the last three years, but not due to increased usage. One of several reasons California is losing self-supporting residents..

PG&E Settlements:
1996 $333 million for chromium pollution
2016 Undisclosed amount for 32 deaths in Oakland warehouse fire
2020 $ 13.5 Billion for wildfires
2021 $ 190million for San Fran harbor cleanup

hmmmm....I wonder why they are raising their rates ???

 

[darkside]

Quite a big pumped storage dam is being discussed for New Zealand. We already have about 80% of our electricity from renewables but need to even out the lumps.

https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/central-otago/massive-hydro-storage-plan-be-reassessed

 

[SteveK]

SV, it's not really fair to divebums to keep rebutting your off-point jabs at a state
you and others are seem to be so threatened by.
I'm not in charge here and the most cursory glance at published data shows that the
CA energy plans are more than feasible even with current technology.
Like many critics you see past failure as a negative when what it really does is enable future success.
Thank you for wishing my children well whatever the intent really was.
They love where they live and that makes me grateful that I chose this great state!

I am wishing well for anyone's kids or grandkids in 25 years. We, well maybe me will be gone when they get to inherit this world.

I am certainly not threatened by CA. You have to defend CA because you are in step with the current direction. Don't blame you for that. Someone said Tesla makes its profits on gov subsidies. Did you know recently they almost left CA for greener pastures. Imagine that. Now you know why your shares went up last summer.

The facts are that CA has a long way to go to become self sufficient with electricity before it can add an infrastructure as envisioned in 25 years. During this 25 years the suppliers of surplus will have less to share.

BC EXRO technology just made a breakthrough with electric engines controls and already a CA company is wanting to test it out. Saw on the news so it must be true.
Feel free to ignore and not bother with replies.

 

[FF]

"And then, there was a proposal to capture part of the water from a power producing dam during the day and when the electrical demand was less, presumably at night, pump the captured water back up into the reservoir to be reused when demand was high.
I never heard of this plan being implemented."

The Blenheim–Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectricity plant in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. The plant is part of the New York Power Authority, and can generate over 1,100 megawatts (1,500,000 hp) of electricity, all of which is sent to New York City.

Location: Blenheim / Gilboa, Schoharie County, ...


Installed capacity: 1,134 MW (1,521,000 hp)


Total capacity: 19,000,000 m3 (5.0×109 US gal)



Blenheim–Gilboa Hydroelectric Power Station - Wikipedia

.

Not at all efficient.

 

[AZ2Loop]

And then, there was a proposal to capture part of the water from a power producing dam during the day and when the electrical demand was less, presumably at night, pump the captured water back up into the reservoir to be reused when demand was high.
I never heard of this plan being implemented.

M.C. Escher's waterfall drawing would make that concept work efficiently. It's worth a quick search (preferably using anything but Google) if you are unfamiliar. Short of Escher's physics-defying art, that concept seems wildly inefficient to me. Admittedly, though, there are smarter people working on this than yours truly.

 

[OldDan1943]

Quite a big pumped storage dam is being discussed for New Zealand. We already have about 80% of our electricity from renewables but need to even out the lumps.

https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/central-otago/massive-hydro-storage-plan-be-reassessed

Very interesting article. Thanks.
The take away is the environmental damage done by the lower storage pond. They did not go into detail about this.

 

[fryedaze]

"And then, there was a proposal to capture part of the water from a power producing dam during the day and when the electrical demand was less, presumably at night, pump the captured water back up into the reservoir to be reused when demand was high.
I never heard of this plan being implemented."

The Blenheim–Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectricity plant in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. The plant is part of the New York Power Authority, and can generate over 1,100 megawatts (1,500,000 hp) of electricity, all of which is sent to New York City.

Location: Blenheim / Gilboa, Schoharie County, ...


Installed capacity: 1,134 MW (1,521,000 hp)


Total capacity: 19,000,000 m3 (5.0×109 US gal)



Blenheim–Gilboa Hydroelectric Power Station - Wikipedia

.

Not at all efficient.

Here are my back of the envelope calcs on Blenheim. Feel free to correct. Blenheim has an installed capacity of 1134 MWe. There is enough water to run for about 12 hrs and it can generate 12,000MWhrs of power. It takes 17,000MWhrs of pump power to move the water back up the hill to the storage pond. The system is a little less than 75% efficient. Not bad if you could manage when you purchased and sold the power. You may even make money, maybe.

Here is the fun part. To fill that storage pond in 12 hrs with solar you need a 1417 MW solar farm (assuming you get 12 hrs of full output, which you wont). 1 MW solar takes up 5 acres. Sooo 1417MW X 5 acres = 7080 acres of 11 sguare miles.

If you swap out the solar for the newest large 15 MWe wind turbine you need 1000 of them to do the same work. Land use for those monster is no small matter either.

Tesla is working with California to build a 730 MWhr battery farm that has an option to be upgraded to 1200 MWhr. Reportedly the biggest in the world so far.

It is going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. IMHO the train has left the station and the green power folks will fleece the tax and rate payers in the name of saving the planet. People are going to fight the land use issue. There will be many stories to come about clearing trees for wind and solar.