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That makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Container ships are always stopping to load and unload containers in ports. Both the ship and the port alread

That makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Container ships are always stopping to load and unload containers in ports. Both the ship and the port already have infrastructure for handling containers. They also have infrastructure for handling refrigerated containers which need electrical hookups. This likely needs more specialized electrical hookups for charging and discharging, but that’s an incremental change rather than a whole new thing.

superice 3y ago
It does make sense. The problem is scale. There is an inland barge in the Netherlands that does this with 4 20ft battery filled containers, capacity is about 200TEU if I remember correctly. The problem is charging. Charging up 4 containers worth of batteries takes a wild amount of power, we’re talking multiple orders of magnitude more than refrigerated units. By my calculations you needed about 100 days of charging on a single reefer plug. Ofcourse you can speed that up with custom charging infra, but still, the amount of total energy needed is mindbogglingly large and won’t scale easily to ships of 20 000 TEU, or even just constant visits of these 700TEU feeder ships.
- algo_trader 3y ago
  > The problem is scale. Well yeah. But batteries are the still most expensive component - much more than transmission/charging upgrades. So if u do hot-swappable batteries, this component is only cycled once every 2-3 days, while you wait for the next ship. Power will cost you 5-10c/kwh, and 10c/kwh for battery capex amortization ($100/kwh LFP with 100 cycles/year). Sigh
  - superice 3y ago
    Does not matter if you can’t move that much power to container terminals. You presumably don’t want to put a nuclear plant in every port. Even if you consider the battery problem to be solved at scale, you just don’t quite appreciate the enormous energy consumption of these ships. Charging them with existing infra used for refrigerated container is a fiction, plain and simple. You’re off by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.
    - _hypx 3y ago
      This is one area where we’re guaranteed to see a fuel being used. Either synfuels, e-fuels, ammonia, hydrogen, etc., it will have to be something that can be carried into the port from elsewhere. There’s no other way around this problem.
      - slashdev 3y ago
        For long distance shipping anyway. These are river barges in the article.
        _aavaa_ 3y ago
        Long distance shipping is currently mostly burning "resid" it's the bottom-of-the-bottom or the barrel. It's 3.5% sulphur and it's not worth much more than the cost of transporting it from the refinery to the port. The idea that shipping companies will go straight for the expensive options of as synfuel, green ammonia (the deaths alone for the crew will be horrific), or green hydrogen is absurd.
    - slashdev 3y ago
      If nuclear were cheap enough to do that, we’d just put the reactor on the ship. Note, I’m not suggesting you could use the existing infra for refrigerated containers, but I am pointing out that containers that need an electrical hookup are not novel. The difference here is the current supplied via that hookup.
      - _aavaa_ 3y ago
        I doubt any other country would let you dock a (non-military) nuclear vessel in their port.
        slashdev 3y ago
        Because it’s very rare currently. I’d be an uphill battle though to get permission, insurance, etc. It could be done, but it’s currently not even close to economical. It’s still safer for the port and surrounding area than the dirty diesel they burn now.
- slashdev 3y ago
  If you use fast chargers you can not only charge them quickly, but you could prefer charging them when electricity is cheaper than normal (when the wind is blowing out the sun is shining.) It can actually help with the intermittent nature of renewable electricity. The port would need to seriously upgrade their electrical connectivity, but there’s an incentive to the grid operator as well.

superice 3y ago

It does make sense. The problem is scale. There is an inland barge in the Netherlands that does this with 4 20ft battery filled containers, capacity is about 200TEU if I remember correctly. The problem is charging. Charging up 4 containers worth of batteries takes a wild amount of power, we’re talking multiple orders of magnitude more than refrigerated units. By my calculations you needed about 100 days of charging on a single reefer plug. Ofcourse you can speed that up with custom charging infra, but still, the amount of total energy needed is mindbogglingly large and won’t scale easily to ships of 20 000 TEU, or even just constant visits of these 700TEU feeder ships.

algo_trader 3y ago
> The problem is scale. Well yeah. But batteries are the still most expensive component - much more than transmission/charging upgrades. So if u do hot-swappable batteries, this component is only cycled once every 2-3 days, while you wait for the next ship. Power will cost you 5-10c/kwh, and 10c/kwh for battery capex amortization ($100/kwh LFP with 100 cycles/year). Sigh
- superice 3y ago
  Does not matter if you can’t move that much power to container terminals. You presumably don’t want to put a nuclear plant in every port. Even if you consider the battery problem to be solved at scale, you just don’t quite appreciate the enormous energy consumption of these ships. Charging them with existing infra used for refrigerated container is a fiction, plain and simple. You’re off by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.
  - _hypx 3y ago
    This is one area where we’re guaranteed to see a fuel being used. Either synfuels, e-fuels, ammonia, hydrogen, etc., it will have to be something that can be carried into the port from elsewhere. There’s no other way around this problem.
    - slashdev 3y ago
      For long distance shipping anyway. These are river barges in the article.
      - _aavaa_ 3y ago
        Long distance shipping is currently mostly burning "resid" it's the bottom-of-the-bottom or the barrel. It's 3.5% sulphur and it's not worth much more than the cost of transporting it from the refinery to the port. The idea that shipping companies will go straight for the expensive options of as synfuel, green ammonia (the deaths alone for the crew will be horrific), or green hydrogen is absurd.
  - slashdev 3y ago
    If nuclear were cheap enough to do that, we’d just put the reactor on the ship. Note, I’m not suggesting you could use the existing infra for refrigerated containers, but I am pointing out that containers that need an electrical hookup are not novel. The difference here is the current supplied via that hookup.
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      I doubt any other country would let you dock a (non-military) nuclear vessel in their port.
      - slashdev 3y ago
        Because it’s very rare currently. I’d be an uphill battle though to get permission, insurance, etc. It could be done, but it’s currently not even close to economical. It’s still safer for the port and surrounding area than the dirty diesel they burn now.
slashdev 3y ago
If you use fast chargers you can not only charge them quickly, but you could prefer charging them when electricity is cheaper than normal (when the wind is blowing out the sun is shining.) It can actually help with the intermittent nature of renewable electricity. The port would need to seriously upgrade their electrical connectivity, but there’s an incentive to the grid operator as well.