| ▲ | rgmerk 5 days ago |
| A quick googling suggests that unloading such a vessel takes at least a couple of days, more likely 3-4. Assuming two days available to charge the vessel, you'd need about 100MW continuous. Not trivial, but doable. As far as battery fires go, sure, but a) there are already a lot of electric ferries in service so designing safe maritime battery packs isn't a new challenge and b) the alternative isn't exactly risk free either; we've seen plenty of oil spills from ships. |
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| ▲ | lostlogin 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| The fire thing comes up with cars all the time. Petrol cars are vastly more likely to catch fire, but are a bit easier to extinguish. I can only imaging how hard it is to put out a ship fire, but is there any reason to see that the situation would be different? Bunker fuel appears to be less flammable. |
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| ▲ | wakawaka28 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | >Petrol cars are vastly more likely to catch fire, but are a bit easier to extinguish. Petrol cars at most marginally more likely to catch fire, if at all. They cannot catch fire by simply being submerged in a foot of water, like an EV can. They are far easier to extinguish than EVs, which are practically unextinguishable and can reignite weeks or months later. You can use a fire extinguisher on a petrol car fire if you catch it early (they are usually electrical fires). If you catch an EV fire early, your best course of action is to run away as fast as possible. Ships are not known to be subject to fires because the types of fuel they use are not generally so volatile, and they are literally surrounded by water which can be pumped to the deck or wherever to drown any fire. Some use diesel, which is difficult to light even with a match. Others use heavy crude oil that looks like tar and would be similarly difficult to ignite accidentally. A battery fire on a ship would be a HUGE problem, as we have seen with ships carrying EVs. I think another often-overlooked risk of EVs is the arson risk. Even if batteries are less likely to catch fire (in the first few years of use, if you baby them), a bad actor can start an unextinguishable fire by shorting out or otherwise igniting a battery pack. This is easy to do and devastating. | | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Petrol cars at most marginally more likely to catch fire, if at all. “An American insurer found that just 25 out of 100,000 EVs suffer fire damage. By comparison, 1530 per 100,000 ICE cars experience fire, and hybrid vehicles suffer a much higher risk of 3475 per 100,000 .” https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/how-much-fi... | | |
| ▲ | wakawaka28 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't believe those numbers, and even if I did it is a fact that EV fires are far more dangerous than petrol fires. As for hybrid vehicles, you get the best and worst of both worlds including two separate high-energy systems that can catch fire. The average age of an EV is way lower than the average age of a petrol car, and they also tend to be toys for the wealthy who do not abuse them as much as the owners of petrol vehicles abuse theirs. EVs are often ruined by minor accidents or water ingress, and can pose a major fire/explosion risk at any shop that would dare to undertake a repair. Just the other day I heard one EV owner was quoted $12k to repair an issue caused by spilling a bottle of drinking water inside the EV. As I said, the fact that these fires can't be extinguished is a major arson risk, as is their toxicity. Insurers will eventually have to raise their rates to cover the extreme risk posed by EVs. https://www.himarley.com/news/ev-charging-fires-are-rare-but... Storing damaged EVs safely means you need to spread them out like a hundred feet apart or something, so that one of them igniting doesn't start a whole lot of EVs on fire with toxic and inextinguishable flames. There are no solutions to these problems after having EVs on the market for several years, because it's a very hard problem to solve. |
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| ▲ | LtdJorge 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | And you get downvoted, lol… | | |
| ▲ | wakawaka28 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes lol. I should have a thousand points by now probably, but every time I get on a streak of telling people uncomfortable truths they knock me down like 50 points. |
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| ▲ | cellular 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Just hang the batteries over the water in containers. Dip them into water if they catch fire. | | |
| ▲ | darth_avocado 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Electric battery fire is not exactly extinguished with water. | | |
| ▲ | Maakuth 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is largely a misconception that's caused by the fact that EV fires are hard to extinguish with normal water sprays. That is because the bettery packs are designed to be water proof, so it is hard to get the fire patrol's water in. If you can immerse the pack in water, the fire is extinguished without much trouble. That's unlike petroleum fires, where the fuel is lighter than water and liquid, so water spray will boil and spread the fire instead of extinguishing it. | |
| ▲ | Qwertious 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It doesn't need to be extinguished, it just needs to be removed from the ship. Even a second of airtime (and a healthy lateral velocity) might be enough that the ship is out of the explosive radius of the battery. |
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| ▲ | PunchyHamster 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | sure, and what you do with remaining 499 burning containers when your crane is dipping the first one ? |
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| ▲ | halJordan 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| How many ships in port charging at a time? Honestly sounds like a good place to stay a few of those micro reactors lockmart claims to have |
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| ▲ | rgmerk 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The Port of Los Angeles is one of the largest ports in the USA, and has about 1,800 ship arrivals annually. If they were all electric, all of this size, and required a full charge on arrival, you’re talking about (very roughly) 1 GW continuous power requirement for charging the ships. That’s a lot; no bones about it, but it’s not unprecedented - aluminium smelters and data centers are similarly hungry for power. | |
| ▲ | anticodon 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Wouldn't it be much easier than to put micro reactors on a ship directly? Like on Russian icebreakers that can function on one load of fuel for 3 or 5 years, don't remember exactly but at least 3 years for sure. | | |
| ▲ | rswail 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Containers in general as well as palletization dramatically improved the economics and port efficiency around the world. Using containerized energy that can be offloaded and charged and swapped at ports is much more efficient way to spread the cost and infrastructure and safety around the world. There are many ports where you really don't want any form of radiation/nuclear materials available. |
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| ▲ | baq 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you have one ship to charge, maybe. Ten is in the standard nuclear power plant territory which is politically impossible to build outside of China. | | |
| ▲ | rgmerk 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You’re not going to build a nuclear reactor (other than military ones) anywhere near a major port. You power this the same way you power aluminum smelters - you have a big honking grid connection and build the generation capacity in places with more room. | |
| ▲ | speedgoose 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | France plans to build 6 more reactors in existing power plants. |
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