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That is a big ship! It looks like it's only going to do a short run between ports in Norway, but that seems like a serious commitment to a renewable future. Kud

by rp1 5y ago

That is a big ship! It looks like it's only going to do a short run between ports in Norway, but that seems like a serious commitment to a renewable future. Kudos to the team.

bee_rider 5y ago
I think it is around the size of a medium-to-large-ish ferry, unfortunately, not really competitive with big-time cargo shipping. (I say I think because ferries are generally measured in "people" rather than "TEU" so it is hard to make a direct comparison, but the sizes are about right). Ships are just big by their nature. But it is a step in the right direction, hopefully this will be a testbed for some tech that can be used in bigger boats.
notatoad 5y ago
>That is a big ship! It is, and it's very cool to see a ship of this size being built as electric and autonomous. but just for a sense of scale the Ever Given that got stuck in the Suez has a capacity of 20124 TEU. This ship has a capacity of 120 TEU. Granted that is one of the biggest ships in existence, but this one is a couple orders of magnitude smaller. Perfectly suited to a small regional route in Norway.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Among container ships this is very small. I would hesitate to call it a real container ship because it doesn’t carry even 1000 TEU, which would itself be very small even for smaller ports. This ship only does a 7 nautical mile run (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland) because battery technology is simply not practical for long distances.
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  That's a shame, lets hope progress is made to allow for longer voyages.
  - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
    It's not going to be, sorry. Having batteries small and light enough for practical large container ships, or transatlantic aircraft, would literally mean reducing the battery in a Tesla down to the size of two gallons of milk. And that is way beyond even the most optimistic estimates of battery technology development. If you look at the cool improvement graphs shown by battery manufacturers, it's always kWh per dollar that is improving. In terms of energy per weight, the best we have commercially is NCA batteries at 220 Wh/kg. The best we have on the prototype stage in laboratories is around 400 Wh/kg, but those last less than a hundred cycles. The theoretical maximum is that of a lithium-air battery, where people have demonstrated 1600 Wh/kg in the lab, but they are not rechargeable. Even if we could somehow make those rechargable, a standard Panamax container ship would require 50 000 tonnes of batteries. But it has a capacity of 52 000 tonnes. So with the most extreme revolution in battery technology, we could just barely make a battery powered container ship that carried 96% batteries and 4% actual cargo.
- incompatible 5y ago
  The article says "7 nm for Herøya – Brevik and 30 nm Herøya – Larvik."

by rp1 5y ago

That is a big ship! It looks like it's only going to do a short run between ports in Norway, but that seems like a serious commitment to a renewable future. Kudos to the team.

bee_rider 5y ago

I think it is around the size of a medium-to-large-ish ferry, unfortunately, not really competitive with big-time cargo shipping. (I say I think because ferries are generally measured in "people" rather than "TEU" so it is hard to make a direct comparison, but the sizes are about right). Ships are just big by their nature. But it is a step in the right direction, hopefully this will be a testbed for some tech that can be used in bigger boats.

notatoad 5y ago

>That is a big ship! It is, and it's very cool to see a ship of this size being built as electric and autonomous. but just for a sense of scale the Ever Given that got stuck in the Suez has a capacity of 20124 TEU. This ship has a capacity of 120 TEU. Granted that is one of the biggest ships in existence, but this one is a couple orders of magnitude smaller. Perfectly suited to a small regional route in Norway.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Among container ships this is very small. I would hesitate to call it a real container ship because it doesn’t carry even 1000 TEU, which would itself be very small even for smaller ports. This ship only does a 7 nautical mile run (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland) because battery technology is simply not practical for long distances.

knownjorbist 5y ago
That's a shame, lets hope progress is made to allow for longer voyages.
- semi-extrinsic 5y ago
  It's not going to be, sorry. Having batteries small and light enough for practical large container ships, or transatlantic aircraft, would literally mean reducing the battery in a Tesla down to the size of two gallons of milk. And that is way beyond even the most optimistic estimates of battery technology development. If you look at the cool improvement graphs shown by battery manufacturers, it's always kWh per dollar that is improving. In terms of energy per weight, the best we have commercially is NCA batteries at 220 Wh/kg. The best we have on the prototype stage in laboratories is around 400 Wh/kg, but those last less than a hundred cycles. The theoretical maximum is that of a lithium-air battery, where people have demonstrated 1600 Wh/kg in the lab, but they are not rechargeable. Even if we could somehow make those rechargable, a standard Panamax container ship would require 50 000 tonnes of batteries. But it has a capacity of 52 000 tonnes. So with the most extreme revolution in battery technology, we could just barely make a battery powered container ship that carried 96% batteries and 4% actual cargo.
incompatible 5y ago
The article says "7 nm for Herøya – Brevik and 30 nm Herøya – Larvik."