HYBRID Bay boats

Hydrogen Fuel Cells, maybe 3kw @ 60 amps, controling variable speed drives and using the bay waters to cool the system. Or maybe go hybrid like a Honda Prius and just hook it up to jet props and see what happens.

I would like to take some existing hybrid technology and drop it in my hull design and see what kind of performance i can get.

If we have nuclear subs & carriers, for the military, I think we can get something just as cool for us into the next 25 yrs.

Re: HYBRID Bay boats

Remember that a lot of the battery duration in hybrid cars comes from regenerative braking, where the wheels act as generators to slow the car down, and that juice goes back in the batteries. Not possible with boats, generally speaking.

Hydrogen fuel cells that use gaseous hydrogen are very low emissions and clean, but aren't high performance. The high performance fuel cells are the ones that run on liquid O2 and liquid hydrogen.

A generator or two powering 2-3 motors driving props is a neat idea, especially for azipod type drives, but it's an economy of scale thing... if your boat is under a certain size, the weight and complexity of the generator, power switching gear, and motors far exceeds the weight and complexity of a simple gas or diesel motor, and that extra weight kills any efficiency gains of using the hybrid setup in the first place. The smallest boats I know of that used this type of setup were the WWII diesel-electric submarines, although I'm sure it's been tried on smaller craft than I've personally heard of.

Right now the only emissions free low fuel cost drive system for boats that's common is a newfangled device called a "sail".

But, I've been hoping that someone develops either a high efficiency steam engine or a large capacity stirling engine for boats... they could use any fuel that burns, like wood pellets or corn, and could conceivably power a small boat at displacement speeds, like the old steam launches from around the turn of the century. The problem with these engine types is that you sacrifice convenience... you have to take a minute or five from zero output to heat the engine to where you can get power out of it.

The best upcoming method for powering lower cost boat engines that match the current level of power output and convenience at a lower cost are alternative fuels, specifically biodiesel, or else switchgrass or sugar produced ethanol. Corn produced eth is a net loss, but producing these fuels from a better plant source would let us use cheaper fuel in boats, with only a minimum of conversion needed from current engines (as compared to steam or stirling power).

Anyway, that's my $2 worth.

Erik

Re: HYBRID Bay boats

ENVE MARINE outof New York, come to find out are providing all sorts of hybrid techno's in marine toys, but they only do custom jobs, I think a production model type bay boat that could prove reliability and maintenance that is acceptable to most of us could be bad @$$.

THey are already doing it to jetski's and large yahts they just don't see the $$$ in doing a production line of small bay boats unless you give them a arm & a leg.