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Electric Car Ferries Enter Service In Norway (bbc.co.uk)
AmiMoJo writes from a report via BBC: Following two years of trials of the world's first electric car ferry, named Ampere, Norwegian ferry operators are busy making the transition from diesel. It is thought that 84 ferries are ripe for conversion to electric power, and 43 ferries on longer routes would benefit from conversion to hybrids that use diesel engines to charge their batteries. If this were done, nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions would be cut by 8,000 tons per year and CO2 emissions by 300,000 tons per year, equivalent to the annual emissions from 150,000 cars. The Ampere uses an 800kWh battery, equivalent to 8 high end Tesla cars. According to a report from Siemens and environmental campaign group Bellona, long-distance ferries are not well suited to electrification, but about 70% of Norway's ferries cover relatively short crossings, so switching to electric power would pay for itself in a few years. The BBC report also mentions some of the challenges associated with converting the diesel ferries to electric ferries. For example, "during initial trials, the fast charging placed excessive strain on the local grid, designed as it was to service a relatively small population," reports BBC. "To lighten the load, high-capacity batteries were put on constant charge on either side of the fjord, ready to transfer the electricity quickly to the ferry's batteries whilst docked."
This is in Norway. The vast (vast) majority of Norway's electricity is hydro generation. Whilst not technically zero emissions, it's about as close as you can get.
So the "externalised" emissions are in fact essentially zero.
I always floor my deisel when I get in front of a Prius
Typical delusion. Norway gets its power from hydroelectrics - 100%. No emissions - 'green' electricity.
But even when you have a CO2-emitting powerplant, it is usually much more efficient than a car engine. This because powerplants don't have the weight constraints of a car, so they can operate at higher temperatures and utilize multi-stage turbines. More efficient power generation means the emissions are lower with a centralized power plant.
Lithium-ion batteries are 80-90% efficient at charging, meaning that if you have to charge a battery on the pier in order to charge the ferry (explained in TFA as necessarily to buffer to load on the grid), then your charging efficiency is about 72% (0.85**2). That means the 150KWH that you have to spend on-ferry means you have to draw 210KWH from the grid. YMMV, but here in the US that's gonna run $35-40, much more than "a cup of coffee and a waffle".
Other than the double charge loss, which stood out as kind of costly, this seems like a solid and sensible engineering project. What I'd really like to hear is someone to do a 10-year follow up on whether they met their cost estimates and what else was interesting (hopefully nothing).
Actually, in general, following up seems like a good idea. We do a lot of hyping about the future and the present, not a lot of the boring work of "hey, so what happened to $COOL_IDEA or $NEW_PROJECT?" Maybe there should be a /. category for that :-)
so sad : (
*sigh* It's significantly more efficient to externalize your emissions, rather than trying to drag emissions control hardware around town and match the efficiency of a power station in a mobile vehicle.
Of course it would be named after Andre-Marie Ampere, the next one will be named after Alessandro Volta, but there was a lot of resistance about naming the third one after Georg Simon Ohm.
AC
"and then my entire commute will be emission free"
Said the guy driving an electric car.
*sigh*. Electric cars cause emissions- they're just externalized at the generating station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway
Installed capacity (2007) 30.46 GW
Share of fossil energy 2%
Share of renewable energy 98%
GHG emissions from electricity generation (2007) 0.8 Mt CO2
Average electricity use (2008) 27 MWh annually per capita
"Norway has imported up to 10% of its electricity production during 2004-2009.[6] According to IEA the net electricity export was 14 TWh and the hydro power production 141 TWh in 2008.[22]
Norway and Sweden's grids have long been connected. A new 1 GW[31] 420kV high-voltage link between Nea in Norway and JÃrpstrÃmmen in Sweden was commissioned in 2009.[32] Beginning in 1977 the Norwegian and Danish grids were connected with 500 MW, growing to 1,700 MW in 2015.[33] Norway's grid is connected with the 700 MW NorNed-cable to the Netherlands. There are plans for cables with Germany (NordLink or NorGer) and the UK (HVDC Norwayâ"Great Britain or Scotlandâ"Norway interconnector)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Majority of electricity production in Sweden relies on hydro power and nuclear power. In 2008 the consumption of electricity in Sweden was 16 018 kWh per capita, compared to EU average 7 409 kWh per capita.[1] A specialty of the Nordic energy market is the existence of so-called electricity price areas which complicate the wholesale commodity market.
The electricity supply and consumption were about equal in 2006â"2009: 124â"146 TWh/year (14â"17 GW). Year 2009 the electricity supply included hydro power 65 TWh (53%), nuclear power 50 TWh (40%) and net import 5 TWh (3%). The Swedish use of electricity declined by 14% in 2009. Potential factors may include recession and the forest and automobile industry changes."
2016:
Produce 149 TWh, use 139, export 12 (don't ask).
Hydro 61 TWh
Nuclear 61 TWh
Wind 15 TWh
Other 13 TWh
2008: Oil 1 TWh, natural gas 1 TWh, coal 3 TWh (Peat <1)
Biofuels likely over 13 TWh so don't ask me how it all adds up.
Here, LMWTFY : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources
Hence the comment "not technically zero"...
"Electric car ferries" doesn't mean an electric ferry, but a ferry for electric cars. When I read the title I think about ferries with charge stations for electric cars and not a battery powered ferry. And still no matter how you want to claim this system is zero emission, it is not. Fossil fuels are sold to fund their green initiatives. The excess of electricity produced by my countries coal plants are sold to Norway to store it in their mountains by pumping up water. It is not zero emission all they way to the source. I welcome every initiative, but as long as we have to start with fossil fuel all these initiatives mean nothing in the bigger picture.
While I don't know about the dockside battery pack idea (maybe if it's also used for grid balancing), getting more of our transportation infrastructure switched over to electric drive-train vehicles with fuel based "range extenders" is going to be a major advance for efficiency/emissions reduction. We waste an insane amount of energy with overbuilt engines that spend most of their time practically idling. It will also help ease the changeover to complete electric when we do stumble upon a battery technology that can completely replace fossil fuels.
Who cares if it's "green"? Electricity from the grid is a cheaper "fuel" than petroleum, so electric engines save money. Case closed. Arguing over emissions is an irrelevant sideshow.
Yes - and externalising them is exactly the key to reducing them.
By putting them at the generating station, you allow that generating station to use wind, waves, gravitational potential energy, light, nuclear decay, ... to power the vehicle, rather than petrol.
Further, you also simply make the whole system more efficient - petrol motors are horribly inefficient, typically around 30-35%. The very very very best, used in Formula 1 cars only achieve around 50% efficiency. And that's ignoring all the other efficiency losses involved in a petrol vehicle, such as the efficiency of the gearbox, the transmission losses of petrol from having to drive a truck carrying it out to the petrol station, and the generation losses in refining the oil.
Finally, that's all assuming that you're right that the generation station causes emmissions... Which you aren't. Currently, 99% of electricity production for the Norwegian grid is from renewable sources.
why can't the ferry carry the combustion engine cars?
What other options did they consider? For example, physically swapping the batteries might be feasible here, rather than rapid charging which tends to wear out the battery. I wonder how a flywheel would have performed?
Oh noe! Global Warming Cooling!!
Who cares if it's "green"? Electricity from the grid is a cheaper "fuel" than petroleum, so electric engines save money. Case closed. Arguing over emissions is an irrelevant sideshow.
What do you mean? Electricity is expensive where I live. This is why oil, natural gas and wood heating are far more common than electric by a huge margin.
What do you mean? Electricity is expensive where I live. This is why oil, natural gas and wood heating are far more common than electric by a huge margin.
None of which power the internal combustion engine in your car. This is an apples to oranges comparison and irrelevant.
Norway has an overabundance of hydroelectric power. Hydro is by far the cheapest renewable (cheaper than coal). And, provided you have enough of it to meet or exceed your consumption, it's available on-demand, unlike wind or solar. That is, it can cover both base load and peaking load.
Unfortunately, most countries don't have such an abundance of the almost perfect renewable energy source. So they'd end up burning coal or natural gas to provide base load electricity at 40%-50% efficiency, transmitted to the ports at 98% efficiency, to charge batteries at the port at 85% efficiency, to charge batteries on the ship at 85% efficiency, for an overall cycle efficiency of 32%. At that efficiency, you might as well just keep burning diesel. Or they'd use wind at 2-3x the cost, or solar at 4-5x the cost, and it wouldn't be financially viable for ferry companies to switch from diesel to electric. (Electric trains work because they don't have to carry the electricity source with them. Ships and planes don't have that luxury.)
Electricity is expensive where I live. This is why oil, natural gas and wood heating are far more common than electric by a huge margin.
No, it is more because the electrical generation throws away half or more of the heat from the fuel, so you can get more heat out of using the fuel directly (unless your climate is mild enough for a heat pump and you don't mind the up front cost). If you're running a motor, then either way you'll have to deal with thermodynamic efficiency, and it is likely to be much more efficient from a large generator plant than from a small engine, even with transmission losses. After all. if the electricity was so expensive, don't you wonder why people aren't just running their own generators, or using propane fridges instead of electric ones in homes, etc.?
All these arguments are like a bad penny. Lots of angry oppositional comments with nothing but existential butthurt to support them.
I read someone commenting 'you'll still need diesel for heavy tractors' So then I ran the numbers, and well no you don't need to run a tractor with a diesel engine, batteries would work well. I used a Cat5 tractor which comes in a hybrid already. Turns out enough batteries to run the thing for 8 hours a day would cost about 20% of the cost of the machine. When you amortize the capital cost of the batteries and the cost of electricity to power it, vs the cost of diesel, it's wash.
Someone tell me why this is impossible due to such and such or something or other they read on the Internet!
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Why not put a nuclear reactor in the ferry? It could, at the same time charge the electric cars it transports!
And, at the same time it would reduce the radioactivity spewed out by coal plants. What's not to like?
But that's before you factor in power transmission and battery losses.
Here is a video and a explanation how it works by Bjørn Nyland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT3QpkrHFf4
you allow that generating station to use wind, waves, gravitational potential energy, light, nuclear decay, ... to power the vehicle, rather than petrol.
This is completely true, hands down! And a Good Thing.
Further, you also simply make the whole system more efficient - petrol motors are horribly inefficient, typically around 30-35%.
Here it goes wrong. How can you compare the "efficiency" of solar and combustion engines? Besides: afaik the efficiency, aka "how much energy potential is there in the source and how much can we extract" of nuclear is far worse than that of a combustion engine, but that doesn't matter because the energy density in the nuclear fuel is infinitely higher. The "efficiency" of solar panels is also much lower than the 50% you quote. So the intrinsic efficiency is largely irrelevant. To make a fair efficiency based comparison, the power plant should also run on petrol and in that case I doubt the increased efficiency of a plant versus a car compensates for the losses in the electrical conversion.
Surprised there are any gains to be had here. Hybrids are great for stop/start vehicles like commuter cars and especially buses, but we get losses through various inefficiencies as well. Are they really stopped/peak accelerating for long enough to get serious gains? Well, I guess so... Still seems surprising.
As for the regular ferries, if we're using batteries anyway, it seems like the fastest way to transfer the power would be to transfer the batteries.
Or go the whole hog. Forget the batteries. Just plug them in with an extension cable!
which are lower than the losses in a typical transmission in a internal combustion car.
> Electricity is expensive where I live. This is why oil, natural gas and wood heating are far more common than electric by a huge margin.
that will change. heat pumps will make it cheaper.
Well, that is a one time cost to cut future emissions.
Without digging into the numbers I'm going to guess that the carbon emissions are less than operating a coal power plant for a month and probably less than building solar and wind power with the same capacity.
That something isn't perfect is a very bad reason to keep using much worse methods.
Electric cars cause emissions- they're just externalized at the generating station.
Bullshit.
1) Not all generating stations cause emisions
2) Even if yours does - it still causes FAR less. The best ICE's are only about 25% energy efficient. Most electric cars are 2 to 3 times that. This means that, even from a dirty grid, the same amount of carbon burned will take an electric car two to three times further, or to put it another way - an electric car on a dirty grid still produces only between a third and two-thirds as much CO2 per mile as a car with an internal combustion engine.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Biofuels likely over 13 TWh so don't ask me how it all adds up.
The wikipedia article pulls from many sources. They may in turn have estimated numbers differently.
Svenska kraftnät have a nice map with hourly updates that illustrates how much electricity is exported/imported between regions and at what price.
There are also some pretty neat graphs lower down that shows energy production/load split in different energy sources.
Typically non-flexible sources like nuclear and coal that can't adapt to the load are kept at a constant level. Wind gives whatever depending on weather and hydroelectric is used to take care of the variation on load and production.
There are also tabs for Norway, Denmark, Finland and the Baltic nations.
Currently, 99% of electricity production for the Norwegian grid is from renewable sources.
True, but mostly irrelevant. Most of the electricity *sold* in Norway is not from renewable sources.
Wait, what? How can you have such a difference? Meet Norway's neighbor, the EU. All EU members have massive subsidies on electricity from renewable sources, but also a large legacy capacity from non-renewables. Norway has a free trade agreement with the EU. Solution: EU companies buy renewable electricity in Norway, and sell back non-renewable energy. Physics doesn't care about politics, so the two currents roughly cancel and you don't need a big interconnect.
So legally Norwegian citizens are using German electricity, from dirty peat-burning plants, while Germans are using Norwegian hydro-electricity. And as Norwegian hydro-electric production is pretty close to its maximum, all extra power needed in Norway will likely be produced in those German plants.
>concrete production is a significant CO2 source.
On the other hand - concrete curing is a major CO2 trap. That's not actually ideal. Trapping the CO2 traps 2 oxygen atoms for every carbon atom - it doesn't restore the oxygen to the atmosphere, but it's still better than leaving the CO2 in there.
I sincerely doubt that the CO2 absorbed by curing concrete over the first decade or so actually matches that which is used to make it, but it must reduce the overall number by a not insignificant percentage.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
And of course, the electric car is ALSO far more efficient than the ICE - so you got significantly more efficient work production at both ends - making the total emissions per mile MUCH MUCH less.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Electricity is also much more flexible. Once you have the distribution and consumer infrastructure in place, you can easily swap generators.
How can you compare the "efficiency" of solar and combustion engines?
For a solar panel, you can calculate the amount of fossil fuels that went into producing the panel, and determine total amount of useful output. You can then put the same amount of fossil fuels directly into a car, and also measure total useful output.
Actually no, it's because heating is one of the few things electricity does really, really badly. It takes long to heat up (which wastes energy) and it does so inefficiently. So directly-burning fuels like gas is a much more efficient way to produce heat -and that makes it cheaper for the purpose of heat. For moving things around - electricity beats fire every time though.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Physics doesn't care about politics. It also doesn't much care about economicsâ. Norway produces the vast majority of the energy it uses. That the EU buys 'credit' for it is irrelevant.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
*sigh*. Electric cars cause emissions- they're just externalized at the generating station.
Which usually given the electricity generation available in the country, tends to be much more efficient than the ICE in a car. (with a few exception like China, India and Australia - according to source which are easy to Google, but I'm too lazy to find yet again for the nth argument about the same subject).
Yes, the US burns fossils to create electricity, but over the life time of a car, even taking into account the initial manufacture (a battery is more complex to build), an electrical car in the US still causes less emissions than a gaz-powered one.
In TFA's Norway, electricity comes mainly from hydro. And even if it's not an Alpine region, the climate is more or less comparable and thus hydro has a very tiny output of green-house gazes and other pollution.
Electricity is *definitely* cleaner there.
You need to travel to a country that produce most of its electricity by burning coal (like China) to find a situation where there isn't much difference between an ICE car and an electric one.
(And in that last situation: well if China adds more clean energy production to its power offering, all the electric car suddenly get better emissions as a consequence. Whereas all the ICE cars would need an engine swap to suddenly have better).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
and after you factor everything (including battery manufacture), only China and a few others (India, Australia) end up having similar emission between both types of car.
On every other country, it range from "a bit better" (like in the US - where fossils are still burned for power generation, but efficiency is better as suggested by parent poster) to "really definitely better" (like TFA's Norway or Switzerland, etc. - where power generation emits very little pollution, thanks to [alpine/cold climate] hydro, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's okay, I always pee in your gas tank once I catch up to where you're parked.
Not true, Norway produces 90% of its own energy needs, and the only partner it imports energy from is Sweden, which guess what, also produces all its electricity wholly from renewable sources.
So legally Norwegian citizens are using German electricity, from dirty peat-burning plants, while Germans are using Norwegian hydro-electricity. And as Norwegian hydro-electric production is pretty close to its maximum, all extra power needed in Norway will likely be produced in those German plants.
Errm yeah. Just that there are no peat burning power plants in Germany. Or anywhere else in the continental EU. The only peat PPs in the EU are in Ireland - and how would you get the power from Ireland to Norway? By electric ferry?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Actually no, it's because heating is one of the few things electricity does really, really badly. It takes long to heat up (which wastes energy) and it does so inefficiently.
No that's completely wrong. There are many forms of electric heating: radiant, convection, fan heaters, underfloor heating, heat pumps, etc., each with their characteristics. For instance radiant heaters are very fast and an electric underfloor heater will be no slower than a gas powered one.
What's inefficient is not the electric heating it's most forms of electricity production.If you burn stuff (coal, oil, gas) to produce electricity you lose two thirds of the calories, whereas you could use more than 70% of them if you were burning the same stuff directly for heating. But that does not apply if your electricity source is photovoltaic panels, wind turbines or hydroelectric power. Also electricity makes it possible to use heat pumps which can let you recoup most of the losses incurred when generating said electricity by burning stuff.
LOL the constant-charge high-cap batteries on shore are caches. Buffers.
1 kg of fossil fuel (coal, diesel, whatever) has between 30 and 45 MJ of energy. Coal has about 30 MJ/kg, gasoil about 45 MJ/kg.
If you want to pull 45 MJ of energy from an electric power outlet at 32 Ampere/110 V, it will take you about 150 seconds. Burning 1 liter of gasoil is much faster given the right burner.
Excuse me, but Formula 1 does not have most efficient engines available.. they are not even using turbines due to strict regulations.
But I wouldn't call them "electric".
Electric cars cause emissions- they're just externalized at the generating station.
Surely, the resident nerds of Slashdot can understand the benefits of abstraction. By externalizing your fuel source to the grid you're basically creating a structured program. You can just put include 'fuel_source.php' at the start of you "program". Then the power engineers can deal with making a more efficient fuel_source function and you automatically get any improvements pushed out to you.
This was actually a concern when I bought my EV because heating the cabin would be a significant drain on the car's battery and badly affect the distance it can travel. Well there's a few things you can do. My car can be set on a timer to preheat while it is still plugged into the mains but I've never needed to do that because the car uses a heat pump and that's amazingly efficient. It is literally blowing hot air before I have even backed out of the garage. Also, there's direct heat coming from the heated seats and steering wheel. Warmest car I've ever owned and it doesn't dent the range of the car much at all. Same goes for cooling, because the heat pump works both ways. I usually lose a couple of Km by turning on the climate control so about 1% of the total range of the car. My petrol car can produce heat from the engine which is fine although there's always a bit of a funny smell associated with that having driven the EV a lot and it takes a few mins before it is actually putting out heat so the car steams up unless I drive with the windows open or run the AC. No such problems with the EV. Also, the AC in the petrol car dents the range by around 5% which is significantly more than for the EV. Petrol cars still have the advantage of distance on a tank full and they're cheap to buy but other than that, they're slow, smelly and quite a bit more uncomfortable even in their high end form and if I want to refuel it I have to go to a petrol station. An EV is quieter and smoother than even the best germany can offer and I plug it in at home so it is always ready to go. The range thing is coming with the latest cars offering 500km (~300 miles) per charge and recharge times getting down to 15 mins or less. The cost issue is that you pay up front for the EV but get that premium back over the years in fuel and servicing savings. I worked out my last petrol car cost me $54,000 over 8 years even though it only cost me $17,000 to buy it because I was paying $5000 for fuel and servicing. My EV cost me $40,000 but the annual running costs are around $200 due to the lack of servicing (rotate tyres, check wipers and fluids) and the cost of electricity ($1 to cover 100 km versus $20 for the same distance on petrol in my old car) meaning that after 8 years the EV will have cost far less and is a much more pleasant car to drive. Once the Tesla Model 3 is available here I'll ditch the petrol car entirely and won't go back. Finally, 100% of our electricity is renewable. I have roof mounted solar and a carbon zero certified energy supplier.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
All generating stations and all cars cause emissions when they're built though.
In the case of fossil fueled cars, it's around half the total emissions.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"True, though I would guess that EV's cause less in construction anyway - if only because they are much simpler devices with far fewer parts, so you can probably make them with less emissions. Also, fewer parts = fewer raw materials = less emissions from mining and refining raw materials.
Mostly the same experience with maintenance costs here after 2 years of owning my Nissan Leaf. My monthly electric bill went up ~$15 and my maintenance so far has only been new wipers and topping of windshield fluid. However, saved myself the initial sticker price by buying Nissan-certified pre-owned, 1.5 years old, 10K miles, for ~$15k. So, I'm admittedly bragging, but I'm also pointing out the initial investment in an EV car doesn't have to be high.
Also regarding the EV car's cabin heating, the heated steering wheel is key, because as long as my hands are warm I am comfortable setting the cabin temperature much lower.
The best gas turbine engines are around 40% efficient. F1 engines are around 51% efficient.
Your calculations and values are all way off.