You probably don't have time to wade thru the rest of this nonsense, so here's the skinny:

I intend to scratch build an ultra-light epoxyed plywood pontoon boat with a deck area of about 7 ' by 14' on 16 ' pontoons.
The craft will be powered by two 24V DC motors. The power will come from eight 12V Deep cycle marine (lead/acid) batteries that will be charged by solar panels and small vertical axis wind turbines.
The system will be split into two separate, isolated units
with one motor, two pairs of batteries, 2 wind turbines and solar array for each side.

The craft itself is still on the drawing board, there's some details left to work out but they're minor.
The current design displaces over 2200 pounds with only a 12" draught.

The plan is to take this boat from as far up the Mississippi as she can navigate down to New Orleans,
relying only on the solar and wind generated electricity she can create on board.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

FGA's to FAQ's

I know this post is redundant but I'm hoping for some fresh hits from the wind power guys and I figure I'll do better if I move the buffet closer to the front door.

The craft is designed to be very light so that it will be easily propelled thru the water. I was a little too successful in my design in that the boat itself, stripped, will weigh less then 800 lb. (360kg).
It will need to weigh 2200 lb. (1000kg) loaded to draw enough water to keep the props at an effective depth.
This is a plus in that I could easily jump from a total of eight batteries to twelve and still have plenty of left over GVW for gear and supplies.
The negative side of the weight issue is that with around 170 square feet of deck and canopy, she could be flipped pretty easy by a strong gust of wind at just the wrong angle.

The Solar panels will articulate. The plan is to hinge them along the ridge of the canopy with some low-tech manual props at the sides of the canopy. There are two issues here:
The river physically runs east and west more often then it runs north/south.
Tilting the panels will give me an even bigger profile in the wind.

The system must to be split into two separate, isolated units.
If anything happens to fail while underway, I need to get the heck out of the shipping channel. There's no breaks on a commercial barge and they would roll over my little boat like a bus over a cheeseburger.
No way I'm putting my eggs or may ass in one basket.

I'm using inboard electric motors with fixed propeller shafts for several reasons:
Conventional electric trolling motors are not designed for full time primary drive or long term immersion.
I can buy two industrial grade DC motors, ESC's, a couple of batteries and a months supply of Guinness Extra Stout for what it would cost to buy just one "Torqueedo".
I can experiment with efficiency of the drive fairly cheaply.
Varying gear ratios between the motor and propeller shaft would only cost me a pulley and a belt, I can use Piranha Props which have interchangeable blades. This allows me to try different blade pitches without the cost of replacing 2 complete props.

Item last would be the wind turbines. I'll need to go with VAWT's.
The 'squirrel cage' will have a maximum diameter of 24" but they could be as tall as 6' with supports at the top.
With the VAWT's mounted in the 4 corners of the craft, they run serious risk of damage in the locks and at dock side.
They'll need to be removable.
I'm considering hard mounting the housing containing the stator and rotors to the craft and being able to lift the masts and fans out of the alternators when the need arises.

1 comment:

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