Dude awesome. I mean you gotta hand it to them. Killing it with affordable electric cars, solar panels and now this. It’s a step in the right direction, and that’s more than you could say about UK
this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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I agree however there is only 1 but and that’s the fact that the labor costs are much lower in China than in the West. Still a great job by China.
That’s not so true nowadays. Skilled factory workers already make a good salary in China nowadays. Like better than any other “global south” country at least. And by cost of living, better than the US probably tbh.
don't need to be paying nearly as much for a skilled employee when cost of living is much lower
Oi lad, shut up and eat yer coal!
We're putting in tones of wind power. The problem is the weird linking of electricity prices to gas prices and the fact we don't have anywhere near the energy storage capacity we need. So we end up paying wind farm operators to shut down turbines and generate less when its extra windy.
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That battery isn’t all that big…. Oh wait that’s a capitalized M!
Still doesn't really seem all that big. Some EVs have 100 KWh batteries. A container ship with the battery capacity of 500 cars doesn't sound like much.
Until you realize that the energy requirement is also different. Land transport in general is very inefficient. Ship is in fact one of the most energy efficient means of transport.
I don't disagree but every time I've seen a diesel engine on a cargo ship it was absolutely massive.
Size wise, it is small relative to the ship size. Look at car engine. How many % of volume is taken up for the engine and fuel tank of car? I think it is close to 30-40%
194 nautical miles isn't terribly far, though. For port to port, sure. For oceanic shipping, I don't think 194 is going to cut it. I think we will probably have to do SMRs or efuels to really cut cargo ship and cruise ship emissions when crossing the Pacific or Atlantic. Though I don't know where nuclear powered shipping (in non-military applications) is in terms of progress.
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Ships are much more efficient than cars. Having said that, this wouldn't have a huge range, nor is it terribly big by container ship standards.
Yep, and the Chevy Silverado EV manages 200kWh now. This cargo ship better be small and efficient because 250 American pickup trucks worth of battery really isn't much.
A cargo ship is probably more energy efficient than an American pickup lol
It's still not a lot of energy though. Some rough napkin math for how far this would get you is below:
Typical medium size cargo ships in the Panama Canal travel around 25 knots burning 63000 gallons per day of fuel with 5000TEU of cargo. That's roughly 600mi/63000gal or 1142miles per ton gallon. That Silverado EV somehow weighs 4 tons (totally safe to be driving at highway speeds), so this is the equivalent of roughly 285.5mpg per Silverado. The Silverado is 67mpge on its own, so the ship is just over 4x as efficient (and slower which is ignored here but would impact the vehicle efficiency).
So using the Silverado's 450 mile optimal range we can say it has at most an optimistic 7 gallons equivalent fuel in its 200kWh battery. 50 MWH would be enough for a theoretical 1750 gallons equivalent if efficiency were the same. But for the efficiency difference this corresponds to a 4.2x improvement to 7350 gallons equivalent. Therefore this is enough to run that typical ship above for 2.8 hours. So with 65000 tons of cargo in the above ship to do a 200 mile route this ship would need roughly 3x as large a battery. More likely it will just carry ~1/3 the cargo or have charging stops en-route.
The 19.4km/h top speed of this ship suggests they're well aware of the extremely limited range this will have for its size and it sounds like the Shanghai to Nanjing route will be pushing it's limits despite being less than 200 miles.
You took the worst possible path to calculate all of this. Just compare energy to energy, that's the whole point of Watts.
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Having seen some spicy pillows in my times… I’d hate to be onboard if any of the battery containers becomes a bouncy castle.
Using standard container sizes as battery modules is kind of genius. That way they can be swapped out when they get older and newer technology comes along, they could even be swapped between ships.
I expect they are using LFP which doesn't do that.
Fortunately energy density is not a concern with boats.
These batteries are likely far more complex in packaging, design, and thermal management that any consumer electronic cell. They'll likely "fail safely" if/when they do fail.
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Good news, it’s surrounded by water! Bad news, it’s surrounded by water. 😡
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360 km or 194 nautic miles is the inter-port distance.
Why not an electric train? There is contiguous land between the two cities, and then you don't have to carry your fuel with you or build giant batteries out of rare earth minerals, while risking run-away shorts that will surely endanger everyone on board, and ensure the cargo is lost.
Plus the distance is <300kms.
Probably because trains are limited in both weight and volume compared to ships and also less efficient. If you have this short route and know it'll need this amount of cargo shipped it likely makes sense.
This single ship can carry more containers than any train could be expected to pull, likely by at least one order of magnitude.
All in all I'd guess the advantages are roughly:
- Reduced staff
- reduced energy use (land based shipping is less efficient almost by default)
- no need for infrastructure except ports (if you assume there is no train line or this shipping would move existing lines over capacity building this ship is likely cheaper or at least in line with 300km of rail)
- simpler logistics (loading / unloading)
Disadvantages:
- Speed (a train would likely move at 3-5x the speed)
I would also not expect the risk for catastrophic fires to be all that high. This ship has the batteries be containers. So once you've designed a container that is a large battery, you've already spent so much that a proper BMS including proper battery fire suppression as well as proper breakers/contractors are things you've built into it without even thinking about cost. The separation provided by building containers as the battery is the next line of defence if one container fails spectacularly, it also allows the batteries to be maintained on land, much cheaper than if they were part of the ship.
I expect they are using LFP which isn't fire prone.
Fortunately energy density is not nearly the concern with boats and trains as it is with cars.
And agreed, the modular batteries are a nice touch.
if only we had some kind of wind powered boat technology.
If only we could get energy to trains easily and continuously.
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I can see lots of disappointed shipping magnates going to the shops on Boxing Day to get the batteries that weren’t included in the box.
I don't think you could sustain an electric ship with solar panels, but I wonder if you could appreciably extend the range of this ship by adding solar panels.
Hell, if panels get cheap enough you could slap panels on top of all the battery modules. If they happen to be covered by something else, so be it.
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