China floats electric container vessel

[dan_b]

Well, seems like China has decided to bypass the "H2 will have a role for container shipping" bit and go straight for gigantic batteries

https://maritime-executive.com/article/ ... 0operation.

[nowty]

50 MWh battery.

The reports are saying the vessels will have the largest installed battery capacity yet placed aboard a ship. They are utilizing a containerized battery approach with 36 replaceable containers as the power source. They will swap batteries along the route with the batteries recharged at stations along the route.

Each of the ships will be powered by two 900 kW main propulsion motors. When the project was unveiled last year, COSCO said the containerized batteries would be the size of a 20-foot container with a capacity of 50,000 kWh.

In addition, they will employ a smart ship management system to increase the efficiency of the operations. It will be able to intelligently adjust energy consumption based on the needs of the ship. It will plan the speed of the voyage according to the arrival time, water flow, battery capacity, and other factors.

[dan_b]

50MWh batteries, and they're swappable en-route - goodness me makes you realise how much energy you need to shift a container ship!

[Paul_F]

50 MWh battery.

I think it's 36 x 50 MWh batterIES.

[Mr Gus]

You can see well positioned solar & wind farm set ups along routes to service these, wonder how long before that all takes off?

(also, how long a battery swap takes)

[Joeboy]

I wonder how the wind is on the Yangzte?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/michelin-puff ... el-economy

[nowty]

50 MWh battery.

I think it's 36 x 50 MWh batterIES.

No chance.
https://microgreen.ca/solar-storage-sol ... gy-storage

[Mart]

50 MWh battery.

I think it's 36 x 50 MWh batterIES.

No chance.
https://microgreen.ca/solar-storage-sol ... gy-storage

The Tesla Megapacks are ~4MWh, and I think they are the size of the larger (40ft?) container, or possibly slightly bigger. So that suggests to me, something like 40 to 50* of those 20ft container batteries, which isn't the end of the world, especially if more space is available from removing/reducing the engine and fuel tanks.

[Edit - Actually, Paul's figure of 36, would work well, but as the number of containers to reach 50MWh?]


Similar idea in Norway last year, with autonomous cargo ships. Much smaller, but they displace road freight for the containers.

Crewless cargo: the world’s first autonomous electric cargo ship

The world’s first fully electric, completely autonomous cargo ship has successfully completed its maiden voyage in Norway, but fear not, it’s a far cry from the dramatic movie depictions of ‘ghost ships’. Frankie Youd profiles the vessel and highlights the benefits of this new technology.

The shipping industry has been pioneering new technology, ship design, and fuel types to set sail towards a greener future for shipping. Now, Norwegian chemical company Yara, has gone one step further by not only producing a zero-emission vessel, but one that is zero crew as well.

[Mart]

And just to prove Paul wasn't going mad, and didn't make up the number 36 - Here's another article on the ships and batts. Looks like something got lost in translation.

And So It Begins: 1,000-Kilometer Route Yangtze Container Ship With Swappable Batteries

It’s not going to run all the way on batteries it carries onboard, of course. Battery energy density is increasingly good and will be multiples of today’s in the coming years, but steaming 1,000 km upstream, even in the 3.6-kilometer-per-hour average water speed of the Yangtze, is a huge energy requirement. It doesn’t have to, as there are 30 container ports along the 2,700 kilometers of navigable waterway (about twice the length of the Mississippi and three times the length of the Rhine).

And 36 containers of batteries will be dispersed through those ports in some undoubtedly optimized pattern to allow the ship to slip into a berth and then winch depleted batteries off and charged batteries on. The containers are reported to have a capacity of 50 MWh of batteries in multiple reports, which might or might not be accurate. The reason I say this is that Tesla’s original Megapack is almost exactly a standard shipping container in size, and it can store 3.9 MWh.

I suspect at some point a digit in the report of kWh capacity was slipped and it has been repeated since, and that the containers actually have 5 MWh each. Total battery capacity for the system initially is either 180 MWh or 1.8 GWh. (If anyone close to the project has confirmation one way or the other, please share.)

[nowty]

36 containers was in the original article.