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Your comment is somewhat hostile. "Justify what you think that means" OK. Well the large scale BES plants struggle to get costs below $200 per kWh. So that mea

by 10u152 4y ago

Your comment is somewhat hostile. "Justify what you think that means" OK. Well the large scale BES plants struggle to get costs below $200 per kWh. So that means that the cost for this battery is about $11,385,000,000. And this doesnt take into account the amount of space and weight this would take up on the ship. The cost of a panamax class appear to be about $300m. or about 38x increase in cost. This seems like a pretty clear case of it's not going to work.

olivermarks 4y ago
thank you @10u152
shkkmo 4y ago
And your reply doesn't take into account the cost saving from not buying fuel and not emitting pollution. Figure 3 from the article specifically looks at the relationship between battery cost and density vs voyage length on the cost effectiveness of switching. The article is analyzing balancing lifetime costs of the batteries and their recharging vs. the lifetime costs of fuel for an ICE powered ship.
- 10u152 4y ago
  56 million kWh. At current Australian wholesale prices that's $17m AUD to refuel. Does that sound like a cheap tank of gas ?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Well that depends, is that a representative price for electricity across ports? What is the representative price for equivalent heavy fuel oil? Yet again, stating a single big number with emphasis is no way to convince anybody of anything. What's the baseline? Or are people just supposed to be scared of big numbers and run away? This is yet again a highly unscientific way to think about a matter.
    - 10u152 4y ago
      A quick google says traditional bunker fuel would be about $3.3m https://www.morethanshipping.com/fuel-costs-ocean-shipping/ https://www.morethanshipping.com/fuel-costs-ocean-shipping/ So 38x more expensive to build and 5x more expensive to fuel. And the big hitch with that is getting a power supply large enough to charge a ship in a couple of day turn around.
      - shkkmo 4y ago
        Your back of the envelope math is crap. You are comparing USD costs to AUD costs, using fuel costs from 4 years ago, using energy costs that are 50% higher than the article, and completely ignoring the costs of the pollution of burning all that fuel. The entire peer reviewed article is about how to make this calculation and what figures to use as inputs. Instead of discussing the article, you are throwing around numbers you poorly calculated or pulled from random out of date articles you googled.
        10u152 4y ago
        Absolutely I don't know the price of bunker fuel off hand so I googled it. Are you saying you think that the price of fuel has dropped in the 4 years ? Because looking at the oil market that seems unlikely. No argument on the pollution item. I'm not anti-electrification in general and yes I had read the article. I just think we should be looking at low hanging fruit. Airlines and large ships are going to be the hardest/most expensive to convert.
epistasis 4y ago
Again, stating a big number and expecting people to go "oh wow I better shut off my brain" is not a very productive way to talk about anything. My questions may be blunt, but they are necessary to understand what point is trying to be made. And your big numbers are all addressed in the article we are talking about. It should not be so much work to get people talk about these matters in frank and honest terms instead of allusions and vibes.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
You could read the article, but your numbers alone are actually pretty positive. Correct me if I'm wrong (skimming some sources and fermi estimating as I can't find it stated), but such a ship can spend about a month at sea at regular steaming speed and cover about 30,000km. It's fairly widely acknowledged that batteries are getting cheaper. If we started designing a ship now, we could plan to fill it with $50/kWh batteries and investors would not balk. Then we could cut range by an order of magnitude and still serve some routes. This takes the batteries down to roughly the cost of the ship. Slow steaming or considering more optimistic projections about sodium batteries might even halve it again. Will it compete with bunker oil for a round the world trip? No. Is it worth starting to think about? Totally.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Batteries are already being applied on smaller passenger focused routes. It has become mundane enough to not even make headlines anymore. For example the ampere was ordered in 2011 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Ampere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Ampere Here's a ferry making locals news (use Google translate) which can operate for 3/4 of the day using batteries and has hybrid propulsion to optimally manage the level of charge. So no need for charging at each turnaround. https://www.sjofartstidningen.se/goteborgs-nya-elfarja-dopt/ https://www.sjofartstidningen.se/goteborgs-nya-elfarja-dopt/ Here's a conversion from diesel to electric for a larger ferry on a short route. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Tycho_Brahe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Tycho_Brahe As the systems become more efficient and batteries drop in price more maritime use cases will be enabled. It's simply all about how long between each time you can charge, and which speed you operate at.

by 10u152 4y ago

olivermarks 4y ago

thank you @10u152

shkkmo 4y ago

And your reply doesn't take into account the cost saving from not buying fuel and not emitting pollution. Figure 3 from the article specifically looks at the relationship between battery cost and density vs voyage length on the cost effectiveness of switching. The article is analyzing balancing lifetime costs of the batteries and their recharging vs. the lifetime costs of fuel for an ICE powered ship.

10u152 4y ago
56 million kWh. At current Australian wholesale prices that's $17m AUD to refuel. Does that sound like a cheap tank of gas ?
- epistasis 4y ago
  Well that depends, is that a representative price for electricity across ports? What is the representative price for equivalent heavy fuel oil? Yet again, stating a single big number with emphasis is no way to convince anybody of anything. What's the baseline? Or are people just supposed to be scared of big numbers and run away? This is yet again a highly unscientific way to think about a matter.
  - 10u152 4y ago
    A quick google says traditional bunker fuel would be about $3.3m https://www.morethanshipping.com/fuel-costs-ocean-shipping/ https://www.morethanshipping.com/fuel-costs-ocean-shipping/ So 38x more expensive to build and 5x more expensive to fuel. And the big hitch with that is getting a power supply large enough to charge a ship in a couple of day turn around.
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      Your back of the envelope math is crap. You are comparing USD costs to AUD costs, using fuel costs from 4 years ago, using energy costs that are 50% higher than the article, and completely ignoring the costs of the pollution of burning all that fuel. The entire peer reviewed article is about how to make this calculation and what figures to use as inputs. Instead of discussing the article, you are throwing around numbers you poorly calculated or pulled from random out of date articles you googled.
      - 10u152 4y ago
        Absolutely I don't know the price of bunker fuel off hand so I googled it. Are you saying you think that the price of fuel has dropped in the 4 years ? Because looking at the oil market that seems unlikely. No argument on the pollution item. I'm not anti-electrification in general and yes I had read the article. I just think we should be looking at low hanging fruit. Airlines and large ships are going to be the hardest/most expensive to convert.

epistasis 4y ago

Again, stating a big number and expecting people to go "oh wow I better shut off my brain" is not a very productive way to talk about anything. My questions may be blunt, but they are necessary to understand what point is trying to be made. And your big numbers are all addressed in the article we are talking about. It should not be so much work to get people talk about these matters in frank and honest terms instead of allusions and vibes.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

You could read the article, but your numbers alone are actually pretty positive. Correct me if I'm wrong (skimming some sources and fermi estimating as I can't find it stated), but such a ship can spend about a month at sea at regular steaming speed and cover about 30,000km. It's fairly widely acknowledged that batteries are getting cheaper. If we started designing a ship now, we could plan to fill it with $50/kWh batteries and investors would not balk. Then we could cut range by an order of magnitude and still serve some routes. This takes the batteries down to roughly the cost of the ship. Slow steaming or considering more optimistic projections about sodium batteries might even halve it again. Will it compete with bunker oil for a round the world trip? No. Is it worth starting to think about? Totally.

Gwypaas 4y ago
Batteries are already being applied on smaller passenger focused routes. It has become mundane enough to not even make headlines anymore. For example the ampere was ordered in 2011 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Ampere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Ampere Here's a ferry making locals news (use Google translate) which can operate for 3/4 of the day using batteries and has hybrid propulsion to optimally manage the level of charge. So no need for charging at each turnaround. https://www.sjofartstidningen.se/goteborgs-nya-elfarja-dopt/ https://www.sjofartstidningen.se/goteborgs-nya-elfarja-dopt/ Here's a conversion from diesel to electric for a larger ferry on a short route. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Tycho_Brahe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Tycho_Brahe As the systems become more efficient and batteries drop in price more maritime use cases will be enabled. It's simply all about how long between each time you can charge, and which speed you operate at.