1. Attachments are working again! Check out this thread for more details and to report any other bugs.

A Very Different form of Hybrid

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by ozyran, May 29, 2007.

  1. ozyran

    ozyran New Member

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2007
    695
    1
    0
    (Full Story Here)

    Other highlights include the recharging system, which gets its electricity from solar panels and a wind generator.

    On a personal note, I would love to see more systems like this emerge in the nautical industry. This just fills me up with hope for the future :)
     
    #1 ozyran, May 29, 2007
  2. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2006
    18,058
    3,075
    7
    Location:
    Northern Michigan
    Vehicle:
    2006 Prius
    We have 5,000 pounds of lead ballast in our boat, which could be replaced with a lot of batteries. Cost, density, and limited life have been the main deterrents. Cost is obvious. Density is a bit more subtle: the effectiveness of ballast is directly related to its density as compared to that of water. The job of ballast is to hold a boat upright in the water. To do that it needs to be denser than the water around it. While batteries are heavy, even the heaviest are not nearly as dense as lead, and newer ones are lighter still, which is good for cars but bad for ballast. Note that this is mostly an issue with mono hulls, as catamarans rely on form stability as opposed to ballast stability, and light weight is an advantage in this case. As for limited life, our ballast is in a fin shape bolted to the bottom of the boat. If this were replaced with batteries, the batteries would need to be fin shaped or fit in a fin, and they would have to be replaceable, since battery life is limited.

    Tom
     
    #2 qbee42, May 30, 2007
  3. ozyran

    ozyran New Member

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2007
    695
    1
    0
    I think if you designed the batteries to fit the keel fin of a single-hull sailing yacht, there would be an opportunity for the single-hulled application of this technology. Especially if you use bolted-on plates to cover the access panels and design the compartment to be watertight. Of course, then there's the issue of ensuring that the people involved in the installation and removal of the batteries were properly trained, and so forth; this is definitely a step in the right direction though.

    Just my $.02
     
    #3 ozyran, May 31, 2007
(You must log in or sign up to post here.)