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Putting ballast to work
My sailboat has 3600 lbs of dead weight ballast. Seems like a real
waste to me. So....Useless idea #3740 Make a boat with 60 lead acid batteries as ballast powering a high efficiency 48 V motor. No diesel or gas, connect to shore power overnight and you could have enough juice to go...........I dunno Another story: I have a friend who collects weird techno-surplus and sells it. He bought several tons of lead bricks from a radioactive source manufacturer that went out of business. Loaded it into the back of his pickup and drove it to Tallahassee and parked on a hill. Of course his parcking brake failed and the truck rolled about 10 feet till it was stopped by a wall. There would have been no damage except the entire load of lead bricks decided to slide through the cab. Not sure what he told the insurance company. |
Putting ballast to work
http://www.catamaranco.com/electricLagoon/
"Parallax" wrote in message om... My sailboat has 3600 lbs of dead weight ballast. Seems like a real waste to me. So....Useless idea #3740 Make a boat with 60 lead acid batteries as ballast powering a high efficiency 48 V motor. No diesel or gas, connect to shore power overnight and you could have enough juice to go...........I dunno Another story: I have a friend who collects weird techno-surplus and sells it. He bought several tons of lead bricks from a radioactive source manufacturer that went out of business. Loaded it into the back of his pickup and drove it to Tallahassee and parked on a hill. Of course his parcking brake failed and the truck rolled about 10 feet till it was stopped by a wall. There would have been no damage except the entire load of lead bricks decided to slide through the cab. Not sure what he told the insurance company. |
Putting ballast to work
I have about 500 lb of batteries in my keel on top of 8000 of lead.
Worked out fine but since the batteries box top is so low (just under the cabin sole) I have make it water tight with external ventilation, higher up. -- My opinion and experience. FWIW Steve s/v Good Intentions |
Putting ballast to work
We sometimes go a week or two without shore power. How would you propose
keeping the batteries charged. The current technology for wind generators and solar cells won't do it unless you covered the boat with cells and put in a "farm" of generators. Kelton s/v Isle Escape Parallax wrote: My sailboat has 3600 lbs of dead weight ballast. Seems like a real waste to me. So....Useless idea #3740 Make a boat with 60 lead acid batteries as ballast powering a high efficiency 48 V motor. No diesel or gas, connect to shore power overnight and you could have enough juice to go...........I dunno Another story: I have a friend who collects weird techno-surplus and sells it. He bought several tons of lead bricks from a radioactive source manufacturer that went out of business. Loaded it into the back of his pickup and drove it to Tallahassee and parked on a hill. Of course his parcking brake failed and the truck rolled about 10 feet till it was stopped by a wall. There would have been no damage except the entire load of lead bricks decided to slide through the cab. Not sure what he told the insurance company. |
Putting ballast to work
A pound of diesel stores the same energy (on a practical basis -- not
the 20 hour rating capacity) as 200 pounds of lead acid battery. That's why there aren't more electric boats and cars. And, putting batteries in the bilge is one of those boating gotchas -- it's a great place for the weight until you get some bilgewater on top of them. So, keep thinking, Parallax..... Jim Woodward www.mvFintry.com (Parallax) wrote in message . com... My sailboat has 3600 lbs of dead weight ballast. Seems like a real waste to me. So....Useless idea #3740 Make a boat with 60 lead acid batteries as ballast powering a high efficiency 48 V motor. No diesel or gas, connect to shore power overnight and you could have enough juice to go...........I dunno Another story: I have a friend who collects weird techno-surplus and sells it. He bought several tons of lead bricks from a radioactive source manufacturer that went out of business. Loaded it into the back of his pickup and drove it to Tallahassee and parked on a hill. Of course his parcking brake failed and the truck rolled about 10 feet till it was stopped by a wall. There would have been no damage except the entire load of lead bricks decided to slide through the cab. Not sure what he told the insurance company. |
Putting ballast to work
"Jim Woodward" wrote in message
m... A pound of diesel stores the same energy (on a practical basis -- not the 20 hour rating capacity) as 200 pounds of lead acid battery. That's why there aren't more electric boats and cars. There are lots of electric boats. But they are a bit specialized. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more electric trolling boats than cruising sailboats! Also, there are a growing number of electric auxiliaries installed on club trainers and other small boats. And companies are now offer small diesel electric setups - handy for catamarans to drive two motors from one genset. One of these days there will be a major breakthrough that makes battery power much more feasible. If only Moore's Law applied to battery technology! -jeff |
Putting ballast to work
Of course you're right -- I had the "30 foot sailboat" blinders on
when I wrote the post -- Parallax started the thread discussing a 3,600 pound keel. To put this in perspective, though, 1,000 pounds of lead acid batteries will store less than 8 kilowatt hours -- call it 10 horsepower hours -- on a regular basis with reasonable battery life. This will take our 30 foot sailboat about 5 miles. There are a wide variety of battery technologies under development, primarily for automotive applications, that will probably help this along in the next five or ten years, But don't look for too much -- we might see the weight difference fall to 20 to 1 from 200, but I don't expect to see parity in my lifetime. Jim Woodward www.mvFintry.com "Jeff Morris" jeffmo@NoSpam-sv-lokiDOTcom wrote in message ... "Jim Woodward" wrote in message m... A pound of diesel stores the same energy (on a practical basis -- not the 20 hour rating capacity) as 200 pounds of lead acid battery. That's why there aren't more electric boats and cars. There are lots of electric boats. But they are a bit specialized. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more electric trolling boats than cruising sailboats! Also, there are a growing number of electric auxiliaries installed on club trainers and other small boats. And companies are now offer small diesel electric setups - handy for catamarans to drive two motors from one genset. One of these days there will be a major breakthrough that makes battery power much more feasible. If only Moore's Law applied to battery technology! -jeff |
Putting ballast to work
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"Jeff Morris" jeffmo@NoSpam-sv-lokiDOTcom wrote: "Jim Woodward" wrote in message om... A pound of diesel stores the same energy (on a practical basis -- not the 20 hour rating capacity) as 200 pounds of lead acid battery. That's why there aren't more electric boats and cars. There are lots of electric boats. But they are a bit specialized. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more electric trolling boats than cruising sailboats! And don't forget submarines, which before nuclear power were diesel electric. Also, there are a growing number of electric auxiliaries installed on club trainers and other small boats. And companies are now offer small diesel electric setups - handy for catamarans to drive two motors from one genset. One of these days there will be a major breakthrough that makes battery power much more feasible. If only Moore's Law applied to battery technology! -jeff grandma Rosalie |
Putting ballast to work
x-no-archive:yes
"Jeff Morris" jeffmo@NoSpam-sv-lokiDOTcom wrote: "Jim Woodward" wrote in message om... A pound of diesel stores the same energy (on a practical basis -- not the 20 hour rating capacity) as 200 pounds of lead acid battery. That's why there aren't more electric boats and cars. There are lots of electric boats. But they are a bit specialized. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more electric trolling boats than cruising sailboats! And don't forget submarines, which before nuclear power were diesel electric. Also, there are a growing number of electric auxiliaries installed on club trainers and other small boats. And companies are now offer small diesel electric setups - handy for catamarans to drive two motors from one genset. One of these days there will be a major breakthrough that makes battery power much more feasible. If only Moore's Law applied to battery technology! -jeff grandma Rosalie |
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