BEV cargo ships discussion

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RegGuheert

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I don't know if this will be a crowded field, but it seems that Yara has teamed up with Kongsberg to build a battery-powered container ship. Interestingly, this to-be-autonomous ship is intended to replace 40,000 diesel-truck trips each year with zero-emission transportation on the water.
Daily Mail said:
‘Every day, more than 100 diesel truck journeys are needed to transport products from YARA's Porsgrunn plant to ports in Brevik and Larvik where we ship products to customers around the world,’ said Svein Tore Holsether, President and CEO of YARA.

‘With this new autonomous battery-driven container vessel we move transport from road to sea and thereby reduce noise and dust emissions, improve the safety of local roads, and reduce NOx and CO2 emissions.’
Here are a couple of videos from the developers of the concept:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VBD7hVRhx0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjTKL4hm4B0[/youtube]

Frankly, I find the schedule to be extremely optimistic for such a challenging project. I doubt this ship will be on the water next year and I also doubt that it will be autonomous by 2020. Still, this looks like a very interesting idea.
 
The referenced article contains not one word about how the batteries will be recharged, how long it will take, and what fuel source is used to generate the electric power for charging. If the loading and off-loading of the containers is as fast as on current container ships, recharging may be the main event keeping the vessel in port instead of under way.

Your skepticism is well-founded. BTW, I started my career as a marine engineer. I hated taking on fuel because it invariably caused delays in departure after all cargo operations were complete, so the engineer on watch during fueling became the official grief target.
 
JohnBike said:
The referenced article contains not one word about how the batteries will be recharged, how long it will take, and what fuel source is used to generate the electric power for charging.
No, they didn't name the fuel source, but since they said it is in Norway, we can be assured the fuel source is almost completely hydropower. In 2013, Norway produced over 96% of their electricity through hydropower.
JohnBike said:
If the loading and off-loading of the containers is as fast as on current container ships, recharging may be the main event keeping the vessel in port instead of under way.
I suspect you are correct that this ship will spent most of its time in port. But I doubt that is a concern on the factory end of this venture.

It seems clear from the article that the ship is being designed to carry approximately 60 containers daily from a port at the factory to the main shipping port. If they plan to do that in a single round trip each day, they could plan for two four-hour journeys, leaving 16 hours for recharging. I imagine the ship's batteries will need to be sized for the trip from the factory to the main port since that is the portion where it will be carrying a heavy load and therefore will be much lower in the water. But the batteries will need to receive enough charge at the main port for the return trip, even if they do not get fully recharged. Perhaps that means they will need to get a 50% charge in about two hours. That should be very doable. Then a full charge can be obtained once back at the factory port.

It appears from the animation that charge is being provided from overhead contacts on the ship.
JohnBike said:
Your skepticism is well-founded. BTW, I started my career as a marine engineer. I hated taking on fuel because it invariably caused delays in departure after all cargo operations were complete, so the engineer on watch during fueling became the official grief target.
Can you tell us how long it should take to unload about 60 containers? Is it much less than two hours?

It seems clear that there must be a strong business case for this company to make such an investment. I seriously doubt that the fleet of trucks costs anywhere near as much as this ship, but certainly labor and fuel costs must be what drives this new idea. Perhaps government subsidies are also playing an important role.

But my skepticism lies in three main areas:
1) Schedule risk: I seriously doubt they can put such a ship in the water sometime next year unless it is already well on its way to completion.
2) Technical risk: While I realize that large ships have employed electric drive systems for decades, those ships are not powered by batteries. I don't know enough about shipboard propulsion to know how much energy must be stored for such a journey, but it must be a massive amount. Managing such a large battery will be no small undertaking.
3) Reliability: Replacing a fleet of trucks with a single ship means that any reliability problems with the ship will have a massive impact on the company's business ventures. I suspect the trucks will see quite a bit of use in the early years of operation of this vessel. I suspect reliability will eventually dictate the addition of at least a second ship. At that point, I wonder if the financial situation still works. Only time will tell.
 
I could be wrong but I thought I read someplace they were putting the batteries in a shipping container box that was swapped out each trip, so you dock, pull the "low" battery out and drop in the fully charge one and your set to go. Seems to make since to make it modular so it would be easy to move like the rest. And they had some on board batteries to run the system while the batteries were swapped out and for emergency power and systems.

Sounds like a good plan for a predictable trip.
 
BrockWI said:
I could be wrong but I thought I read someplace they were putting the batteries in a shipping container box that was swapped out each trip, so you dock, pull the "low" battery out and drop in the fully charge one and your set to go. Seems to make since to make it modular so it would be easy to move like the rest. And they had some on board batteries to run the system while the batteries were swapped out and for emergency power and systems.

Sounds like a good plan for a predictable trip.

That's a really clever solution for this application; I like it! They are already loading and unloading shipping containers, what's one more? It's less time than waiting to refuel, probably even with a liquid fuel like diesel.
 
GetOffYourGas said:
BrockWI said:
I could be wrong but I thought I read someplace they were putting the batteries in a shipping container box that was swapped out each trip, so you dock, pull the "low" battery out and drop in the fully charge one and your set to go. Seems to make since to make it modular so it would be easy to move like the rest. And they had some on board batteries to run the system while the batteries were swapped out and for emergency power and systems.

Sounds like a good plan for a predictable trip.
That's a really clever solution for this application; I like it! They are already loading and unloading shipping containers, what's one more? It's less time than waiting to refuel, probably even with a liquid fuel like diesel.
Agreed this sounds like an intriguing idea. I did the math and you can fit 18 Tesla PowerPacks into a standard 12m container. That comes to 3.78 MWh or energy storage, which is right in the range of 3.5 to 4.0 MWh given as the preliminary specifications.

Any chance you can find the link to the mention of that approach, BrockWI? All I could find in the link above was that the temporary bridge would be containerized.
 
RegGuheert said:
China becomes the first to launch a BEV cargo ship. It's a bit perverse: this ship, which contains 2.4 MWh of batteries, will be charged by coal power and will be used to carry coal to the power plants.

Well, to be fair, they already have ships that do that. The difference is, today they probably run on diesel. Gotta start somewhere. Did you expect them to carry photons to the PV panels? ;)
 
It appears that a Dutch company called Port-Liner is joining the electric cargo ship market:
InsideEVs said:
Specs for the smaller ships:

52 metres long and 6.7m wide
can carry 24 20-foot containers weighing up to 425 tonnes
single 20-foot battery for 15 hours of operation

Spec for the larger ships:

110m long
can carry 270 containers
four batteries for 35 hours of operation

According to the articles, the electric version has 8% more cargo space than its diesel counterpart.
This is a market for BEVs that I was really surprised to see, but it is gaining "steam".
 
insideEVs has a feature on a couple of battery-electric ferries with 53 more on order:
InsideEVs said:
The first electric ferries – Ampere in Norway (since 2015) and Elektra in Finland (since 2017), have proven their capabilities and operators are now lining up in the queue to purchase more.

The Ampere, built by Fjellstrand Shipyar with Siemens and Corvus Energy, decreased emissions by 95% and costs by 80% (compared to standard ferries), as well as noise.

With over a 1 MWh battery, two 450 kW electric motors from Siemens and 1.2 MW fast charging when loading/unloading, it’s an excellent solution for the sea.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB6rKP34Mtk[/youtube]
 
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