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LFP(1/4): LiFePO4 batteries for Ya

This is the first of 4 articles about LFP on the Ya. This is about the why.
The Lithium Ferro Phosphate batteries (also called LiFePO4, or LFP) have so many advantages over the conventional batteries, that we recently changed our system and installed them on “Ya”.

If we could do it all over again, we would have installed them right away.  Not only because they are lighter, smaller, safer, cleaner, have a higher storage efficiency, they are more durable and require less maintenance. But also, because they have the future.

(Left) End 2013 the lead acid battery bank was installed. (Right) Hadrian lifted all 24 60 kg batteries out in 2021. Hadrian has a strong back. I have a bad back, but I could easily install my LFP batteries by myself.

LiFePO4 batteries are lighter and smaller

We replaced the 24 60 kg lead acid batteries for 48 LFP batteries. The lead acid bank was weighing 1420 kilogram, the new LFP bank weights less than 300 kg, including BMS and wiring. This is 5 times lighter.

The big red battery is the lead acid, the little black/blue battery is the LFP one. For each big lead acid battery, with a volume of 25 liter, we replaced two of the little LFP batteries, together 5 liters. This saves 5 times the volume.

Lithium stores the electricity more efficient and effective

A lead acid battery has resistance to take energy. It simply costs energy just to put the electricity in, for example from a charger. 15% (with new batteries) to 20% (when older) of the electricity put in, converts to heat. The charger has to ‘push’ it into the batteries. So, 80-85% of the created energy will be stored. And again, if the electricity must come out for a device, it takes another 15 (new) to 20% of electricity.

So, the storage efficiency of a lead-acid battery is 83% X 83% is about 70%.
For example, if you generate 10 kWh for your lead acid battery during the day, you will only get 7 kWh out of it in the night.

A lithium battery takes the electricity in easily and gives it just as easy to the consuming devices. There is hardly resistance, you will lose not much more than 2% to bring it in, and 2% to get it out. This makes an overall storage efficiency of up to 95%.
So if you would replace your lead acid for LFP, you could take the LFP 25% smaller and you have the same energy to consume.


Storage means: bringing it into the battery from an energy source, and getting it out to a consumer device. The energy efficiency of Lithium is 25% higher.  

The storage of a Lithium battery is also more effective. The best traction lead acid batteries, can be discharged till 20%. But the Lithium Ferro Phosphate battery can go to 10%. It is 90% effective.

Next to the 25% extra on efficiency, the LFP battery can also be discharged 10% more.

So, if you replace lead acid for LFP, you can buy a 25+10% = 35% smaller capacity on the effective storage of the original lead acid, and you have the same amount of energy to consume.

LFP is safer

LFP (Lithium Ferro Phosphate) is not Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer (LiPo or LiPol). These types are used in your mobile phone, or in electric cars, and they can start burning spontaneously. The problem is even bigger, because, even when the fire is extinguished, it is self-igniting. Now, electric cars with an extinguished fire, are immediately put in a big container with water, to cool it down for days. It is weird that the governments are OK with Lithium Ion, especially in big amounts, such as in cars. Never ever put it on your ship, because at sea you can step from board only once, and there are no emergency services for a quick salvage.

This fire test video  shows the difference between Li-Ion, LiPo, and LFP.

With LFP on board, the battery bank can only continue burning if you keep on putting energy into it. You stop the input; it is self retarding. So, when at sea, it is safer than any other energy storage medium, such as Lithium Ion, gas, petrol, diesel, or lead acid batteries.

About the lead acid. The hydrogen coming out of open traction batteries can explode. The sulfur acid can ignite and burn on higher temperature. And the sulfur acid (H2SO4) is dangerous by itself. When a battery bursts or explodes, the damage made by this acid to its environment is gigantic.

Sustainability potential

We know that diesel, petrol and other combustives are the worst on sustainability, because all of it comes into the environment. The biggest part as CO2 causing the climate change, but also much NOx and SOx, leading to acidification.

The A brand lead acid batteries recycle between 98 and 99 %. So about 14 to 28 kilo of lead and/or sulfuric acid of our old battery bank ends up in the environment. That is a lot, because lead is a heavy metal, so very bad to the environment, and sulfuric acid is as well.

About Lithium, the best thing is that we use about 1/3 of the weight compared to lead acid. The properties show that Lithium should have the potential to create a smaller environmental impact then lead and sulfuric acid. But we don’t know yet about the environmental care taken for Lithium. These batteries are new, and the sustainability number is still unclear. (source )

LFP battery maintenance 1 minute per 3 months

The traction lead acid batteries are always open batteries, you need to add demineralized water on a regular base. The batteries need to be equalized, to keep them in good shape, every 3 months, you have some hours of work on it. Nothing compared to a diesel of petrol engine, but still.

LiFePO4 batteries have a Battery Management System taking care of all this. No refills, nothing. The only thing you do is take one minute every 3 months to push the plug of the charger into an 230 Volt outlet. The battery bank will be charged to 99%, and in the last percent the BMS will run a balancing routine. This balancing keeps them all on the same voltage level, so you don’t have the risk of overcharging or discharging one too much.

GRAPH PLUG IN OUTLET

Once in a quarter you put the charger plug in an outlet and the BMS will top up the bank and balance all cells. That’s it.

Durability

The durability of a battery means how long it lasts as an electricity storage. By using it, a battery loses a bit of its storage capacity. At the end of its life, it will use more and more electricity by itself.

The best condition for a lead acid battery (all types: traction, AGM or gel) is to keep it full, on 100%. They last long if you start an engine with it, and immediately charge it back to 100%. Like with cars. That way, the battery can even last for over 10 years.

The worst thing is, to empty it. That shortens its life dramatically. Deep cycles will also shorten the life a lot.

But its life also shortens when it is used just a bit all the time and it (hardly) ever is on its 100%.

Actually, the best is not to use a lead acid battery, or short, or sporadic.

On the Ya we oversized our battery bank in the first place, hence we prevent real deep cycles, so giving it the chance for a longer life. But, the inherent problem on Ya is that the lead acid bank was seldom fully charged, as it is the energy buffer. The meter generally showed a percentage between 60 to 90%. So, we committed a continuous light ‘abuse’ to the battery bank.

And we noticed this. Over the years, the batteries contained less and less energy. It was going down faster each year. In the seventh year, the battery bank contained effectively about 25-30 kWh instead of the original 55 kWh. It was still enough for getting us comfortably to Portugal and Spain, but we considered renewing them, because this deterioration process goes faster and faster.

Then we checked the LiFePO4 batteries, and we saw two interesting properties:

  • Lithium Ferro Phosphate likes to be not full. Then they will last longer. Just what we want.
  • The estimated life is generally accepted for 10 years and they would then contain 80% of their storage capacity. And from then the storage capacity will lower in a curve, just like lead acid does, and it is widely agreed that at 20 years your LFP battery should be considered dead. Like our lead acid batteries in 7 years.
The storage capacity of our Lead Acid batteries decreases basically a curve. In year 7 we had effectively 20-25 kWh. Still enough for us, but time for a change. LFP is generally accepted as much more durable. The estimation is that the storage capacity loss would show in a comparable curve, but more stretched.

Conclusion

We thought first that LFP batteries were way to expensive. But:

  • The storage efficiency is 95%, versus the 70% of the lead acid. And you can discharge them till there is 10% left so an extra 10%, compared to the 20% of lead acid.
  • They are lighter, smaller, inherently safer, and the environmental damage appears to be lower.
  • The durability is roughly two times longer.

This 35% better storage efficiency means: you need 35% less battery capacity than for lead acid.

The double number on durability means that the price per year would be lower.

So, is Lithium Ferro Phosphate really so much more expensive? All together, we were tempted to check the prices.

Next week we show the result in a sort of business case.

sources:
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/?cf_chl_captcha_tk=pmd_UzmpBeaklu64YJSZjEHNitDOqdXlTcPUQuhTxJrCGtM-1635934800-0-gqNtZGzNAyWjcnBszQiR )
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/ah-efficiency 

Any comments? Please mail us: info@fossilfreearoundtheworld.org
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Fossilfree fellows: Matteo Miceli’s solo fossil free circumnavigation!

We met Matteo and Corinne in the laundry of Puerto Calero, Lanzarote.  

“Are you the sailors from that electric boat?” 
“Yes, Peter did a fossil free circumnavigation from 2016 to 2018.”
“Really? Matteo did a fossilfree circumnavigation in 2014!”

Wauw! This is an incredible coincidence that we now meet. That night, we ate Corinne’s splendid melanzane alla parmigiana, with tuna caught by Matteo. The video of Matteo’s circumnavigation made Peter and Matteo exchange their experiences.

Matteo departs from Rome and starts his fossil free, solo, self-sufficient circumnavigation. Zero stops, passing Cape Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn. Watch the impressive video.

The similarities are striking. 

Because of the language barrier, both sailors did not know of each other’s existence nor of the similar project they were working on. In both cases, a team of volunteers helped them. A true belief in the power of sailing fossil free and the passion for sailing connects them. Also, the hands-on mentality and the desire to shape their own ocean-worthy dream-ship. Both want to show to the world that it is possible to sail fossil free, even the complete world around. Both have written good books on sailing, in their native language. And for both, good food on board is one of the essences of sailing.

Real spaghetti alla Carbonara (source: wiki)

Now for the differences: Matteo built a racer that enabled him to sail around the world solo, completely autonomous and fossil free in 5 months. On board were 2 hens for eggs, fishing gear and his own ‘farm’ for growing vegetables. 

Matteo took the route of the maximum wind speeds, avoiding populated areas.

Matteo sailing just north of the Southern Ice Sea, with his fast Eco40 nearly flying over the waves, always sailing with the strong, sometimes storm winds.
Meanwhile, one of Matteo’s hens lays an egg (source: video Matteo Marceli)
Growing vegetables on board of Eco40 (source: video Matteo Marceli).

Peter built a yacht that enabled him to sail around the world fossil free in a leisure cruiser, with guests, in 14 months. A comfortable life on board for Peter and his guests was possible. 

Ya: fossilfree around the world, the so called ‘trade wind route’ with all guests taking part in it.

He took the route of the trade winds. Nevertheless there was the challenge to include a passage through the doldrums, which would normally require, according to the sea man’s books, to ‘take as much diesel as you can”. Which he did not, of course.

On board of Ya, Peter and Matteo exchange the books they wrote. 

We are very happy to have met our fossil free fellows Matteo and Corinne and we hope the community of fossil free sailors will grow!

You have a reaction? Please mail 
info@fossilfreearoundtheworld.org

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Porto Santo’s Buggy Power

Porto Santo has a pleasant temperature all year round, there is hardly any rain and the soil is rich in minerals, good for your health. So, except for one air-force base, its main source of income comes from tourism, in the form of buggy power! It comes with nice buggies to rent now. And, with a ‘buggy’factory for a green future.

Effective advertising for Porto Santo Tours on a wall near the beach

Citybubbles are also buggies

The owner of Citybubbles understood what this kind of tourists wants: sustainable transportation. 

The proud owner of the ‘Bubbles’ electric cars in Madeira and Porto Santo with one of his cars. And, the electric kick scooter he uses to commute to and from the harbour.

In 2012, when Peter started building “Ya”, the owner of ‘Bubbles’ started renting out small and light, 100% electric, cars in Porto Santo. Buggies. When you rent the car, it comes with an application that includes detailed maps of the island.

Fossilfree sightseeing and shopping in Porto Santo The cars have a capacity for two passengers. And some shopping 😉

The buggy has a range of 60 km, and a top speed of 90km/h. You will need neither the full range, nor the top speed because the island is small and you enjoy it more on a slower speed. But, just to be on the safe side, you can charge your car in lots of (often beautiful) places.

One of the most beautiful places on Porto Santo is the South point, with the rough rocks; the loading station for ‘Bubbles’ is very elegantly tucked away.

Buggypower!

And then, we came across lots and lots of buggies. Buggypower!

You see, the algae plant near the marina appears to be the largest closed-circuit production facility of micro-algae in Europe. They build CO2 capture units. And, they harvest the algae and produce algae-products as a basis for food, feed and cosmetics.

Just a glimpse of the bubbles in the beginning of the process, before the tube turns greener and greener
The big buggy plant near the Marina on Porto Santo, On the left side you see the different shades of green, meaning the different growing stages.

We already wrote about the CO2-capturing potential of micro-algae. It’s amazing what those buggies can do!

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Use only what you need (5) – and you generate it yourself

In the last blogs on ‘use only what you need’, on the basics of fossilfree sailing, on cooking, sailing, and on the human factor, we showed how we use only what we need, and how you can do that. It saves about 70 or 80%. Yes, that much! So, we use only little.

Now that the consumption is so little, we can generate our own energy. On our ship we use the three general ways to generate it: solar, wind and hydro energy. This ‘tripod’ gives us the stable energy input we need to stay in balance. Check our Energy Balance, our basis on board. We have never had a shortage. Although it was sometimes not much. 

All devices are quality stuff, but not fancy; it is all just ‘from the shelf’. 

You can do the same. 

Here we can use all three sorts of generation: a bit of solar on the panels, a little bit of wind in the turbine, and -although the wind is light, with the Parasailor www.parasailor.com  we can easily make the necessary speed to make the Autoprops run the electric alternators (“dynamos”) and hydro generate.

Solar panels

Instead of a canvas bimini top, we made a fixed one and covered it with solar panels. In the 4 or 5 hours that the sun shines well in a cloudless sky, they deliver about 30% of their rated peak energy, and when it is cold, they can do 40%. This is pretty good. These ones are thin, so the wind can keep them cool, which is the prerequisite for an effective working solar panel. 

The deck panels are mounted on the deck, which is also insulated. So, in the tropics these ones work badly, in the subtropics reasonably. In the higher latitudes, they stay cool and they do just as well as the panels on the bimini top.

Behind the windows we put some flexible panels. Flexible panels deliver relatively poor, But, they do better than expected, because they get the solar radiation also from the reflecting water. That counts double.

The bimini protects you from the sun, while it delivers energy. The deck panels are walkable, but deliver less in hot weather because they don’t stay cool. 

All details and numbers you find here including their contribution to our Energy Balance  

Wind turbine

Any wind turbine works only with enough wind. There is one place where there is most wind, and that is high, in an undisturbed area. Our windmill is put on the mizzen mast, on 7 meters high. It should at least be over 5 meters, do no spend money on a windmill put on a pole of 3 or 4 meters. 

Most efficient is a three-blade turbine. All A-brands have these mills. 

We chose for the Silentwind, because it combines a light weight with a high yield. The MPPT (the converter box, with the vulnerable electronics) is not in the turbine but you can put it in a dry area. The device has a ‘light wind booster’ in it, so even in light winds it can take some energy out of it.

If mounted high, at least over 5 meter, the windturbine is effective

All details and numbers you find here including their contribution to our Energy Balance. An article comparing three windturbines, you find here.

Hydro generation: Autoprops and alternators

We use the most efficient Autoprops https://www.bruntonspropellers.com/autoprop/ as propellers. They are connected to E-tech www.etechdrives.com electric motors. They give us propulsion. But if the sails give us the speed, we switch a button to ‘Charge’ and the motors turn into alternators. The Autoprops will rotate in the water (like the windmill in the wind) and will run the alternators, making the energy to put in the battery bank.

The Autoprop (left) here seen from astern (‘behind’) in feathering position, and the blades change themselves in the most efficient pitch (angle), depending on rotation and boat speed, to drive the motor (right), switched to the alternator function and generate the maximum power into the battery bank.

All details and numbers you find here, including their contribution to our Energy Balance. 

Battery bank

The Ya has had a conventional battery bank. It could contain 55 kWh (kiloWatthour). That is what an average Euopean family uses per week. After 7 years the bank was worn out. The energy content had reduced to only 30 kWh. Still this was enough, because we only just use what we need. But it was time to renew them. 

We renewed them for a Lithium Ferro Phospate bank, or LFP. These are like the light and modern batteries used in electric cars, but then then in a safe, not inflammable version. The batteries are better controlled than lead acid ones, they last two times longer and the maintenance is nothing more then plugging it in a 220Volt outlet every three months.

The big (red) battery is one of the 24 lead acid batteries we had. It weighs 60 kilos. The small battery is one of the 48 new LFP batteries we have and weighs only 4 kilos. Two of these small ones have nearly the same energy as one big one. This saves weight and volume. And they last about 2 times longer. 

The energy content is 42 kWh nominal, so 33 kWh effectively. In the 4 months of use it has never been empty because of 4 reasons:

  1.  the properties of the batteries are more efficient
  2. We only use what we need
  3. We only use what we need
  4. We only use what we need

In all comfort and pleasure!

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Use only what you need (4) The human factor

All guests on board of Ya automatically start living and acting using less energy. Regardless of age or background. Of course, Ya’s design and devices like the watercooker make it easy. But, in two or three days, the guests start living and acting in a more sustainable way, without having been told. They only use what they need. A miracle? All pre-biased?

Here we explain how people, like you, can change.

All guests on board ‘Ya’, from the age of 14 to 79, change and start using only the energy they need.

Much rewards mixed with a little threat

If you cook water for tea on board ‘Ya’, the electrical cooker cooks it within a minute. A kettle on a gas stove would take 3 to 4 times longer. And, the electrical cooker doesn’t heat the cabin with lots of steam finding its way to your ceiling and your bed linen. So, this is rewarding.

The same reward you get when using the induction cooker. It is straight forward: the energy goes only to the cooking, safely, without hindering side effects. The haybox gets a pan out of the way and makes cooking more relaxed.

Using the well-insulated fridge and freezer, all the same. Of course you always close the lid after opening it. The fridge works without the disadvantages that most yachts experience because of bad insulation. So, the diesel engine has to run for an hour to refill the batteries, sucked empty by these fridges. Not on Ya.

When we use the engine for propulsion, the electric engine gives no noise, no fumes, it is all peace and quiet.

Cooking on board with a micro wave, water cooker, bread baker, fridge and freezer, no heat or moisture as side effects, and all safe – this pays off. The condition is to only use what you need.

Who would not appreciate all this positive impact? The funny thing is: if your environment is rewarding and positive, you want to keep it this way. So, people get interested.

And, knowing that we regenerate all energy ourselves by solar, wind and hydro, people want to know how much the equipment takes on energy. Because you don’t want to lose, you want the energy to stay in balance. The idea of an empty battery bank -although never happened in Ya’s seven years existence- creates a threat that keeps you away from this downside.

The display and us

You start a car and you watch the display. You make speed, you check the display. In winter at home, when you feel chilled, you check the temperature display. On a building you see a display with the time you already know, and the temperature you already know. Why do we watch? Because you want to be sure. And because there might be changes, and you want to know all about it. So, a display attracts our attention.

In most yachts, the energy displays are put away in the ‘Engineering Corner’. Often they show abracadabra like ‘Ah’ or ‘Amp’, with numbers in a small print.

Lucky us: we have one with the W of Watt and everybody knows that a 10 W light bulb uses 10 Watt power. And the numbers are in big print. We mounted the display on a central place in the cabin, visible from all seats and corners.

The display has a central place, like the clock in the old-fashioned house, so everyone sees it.

Do you want to see for yourself how this works? We put together different screenshots that make clear how much energy we use and get in which situations.

The percentage number shows the energy content, how full the battery bank is. With one finger tap the display changes to the mode where you can see the Watts coming in or out (here: 359 Watt, left under)
At night on anchor, and no wind, we lose a bit. But even on a cloudy day you get 120-150Watt.
The average is about 300Watt. With a good sun at noon, the panels charge over 400Watt
And 100 Watt more when the wind generator running in a moderate wind. And when we switch on the propellers and alternator at a 5 knot speed, we easily get 150 Watt extra.
The water cooker takes about 2 kWatt for 1-2 minutes and the other cooking devices can vary from 200 W to 3,5 kWatt
Motoring 3 knots in a calm takes 500 Watt, but in wind and sea against you, much more.

Leaving the dock, you give the engines a blow to get speed. The engines can take up to 15 kW.

Once a new guest just switched on the water cooker and she asked: “Peter, kW, that means kilowatt, doesn’t it?” Because she was surprised that a water cooker used so much. She always thought that the lights were the big users. She learned that on the energy for one pot of tea, you can switch on all LED lights on board the Ya for one week.

Our guest Marijke is on board for one day now and starts spontaneously checking the energy use and generation numbers.

Seeing is believing, awareness is change

If you use only what you need, you will find that the batteries are always at an acceptable level. Or even better: if you take good care of your energy generation, you get rewarded by more energy. When you sail in light winds, you can hoist the Parasailor and start generating with the Autoprops. If you are on anchor and you make sure your solar panels are not shadowed, this makes a huge difference. These actions make you feel safe, you can rely on your energy-balance.

Your display can also work at home

Your energy display at home is put in a closet, often even without a decent door knob, so you only look at that meter incidentally. At the end of the year you get a bill from the supplier and then you think: “Now really, this year I want to use less.’ But again, a year later… the supplier has sent another bill and he is the only laughing one.

Our friends got solar panels. They then asked the company to put the display outside the meter closet. Every time they were near, they read the display. What comes in, what goes out. They learned to interpret it. A sunny day, was a good day. When her son came home from school, he could see that Mum had a cake in the oven before he could even smell it. The family talked about what costs energy and what saves energy. You know what happened with the use? They used 40% less since then.

So, if you want to save money, and some of the environment for your children, mount a display where you can see it!

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Use only what you need (3) – Sailing

On the last use-only-what-you-need-cooking blog, we got various reactions, and all good. So, are you ready for the big one? Sailing. With sails, not on the engine. If you only use the engine when you need it, the pay off is great in the experience on comfort, safety, sailing pleasure and experiencing nature.
The key to most of it is the planning, so about good weather forecasts.

Do you know yachties who like motoring? I don’t. Because the real fun of sailing lies in … sailing with the sails. (Photo: Vernoo Media)

Planning according to the weather forecast

30 years ago, a weather forecast could be: “During the day the wind will be South west to North West 2 to 3 Beaufort, in open area up to 4 or 5 and in showers 6 Beaufort” So basically, you didn’t know more than that the wind could be Westerly, between 2 to 6 Beaufort. So you hardly planned for the weather, you just decided on the day itself.

Nowadays we have great weather forecasts, in with wind angles per degree, and speeds in knots or m/s. All this with great accuracy over 5 days ahead. We take profit of that bij planning our voyage. When we make trip for a weekend, we decide about our routing depending the forecast. Never more the wind against you!

But still we meet sailors making appointments first and afterwards checking the weather. Once we heard a story of people sailing an 8 days round trip. They constantly motored, 5 knots for 600 miles, beating against waves and winds – and actually could set sails for a mere 100 miles. Terrible. Their appointments happened to be made contrary with the weather. This is not only a waste of fossil fuel, money and CO2, but also bad for your health, your precise leisure time, and the extra CO2 is bad for your childrens future.

Before we sail a trip, big or small, we plan it and check the weather. It saves an enormous amount of engine hours, energy. And setting sails gives us pleasure, motoring not.

With the use of a weather forecast instead of the diesel engine, they would have sailed the other way around would have led to a joyful trip with only 100 miles motorsailing and 700 miles of sheer sailing pleasure.

So do use the engines only when you need it. It gives sailing pleasure in stead of banging your boat into waves and wind.

A modern yacht

The Ya is a modern yacht. She is not heavy, and you can feel her sailing. This makes the sailing fun. Especially with light winds we enjoy sailing in all its subtleties. And then we are surprised to see so many modern yachts going on the engine., even with 5 knots of speed. That’s a pity, they miss the best part! Perhaps they like the motoring? Well, then buy a motor yacht.

And in heavy weather, if you use the engine instead of sails, you miss the safe part. Because a sailing yacht is designed and built for sailing, and not for heavy engine use.

So, on our modern yacht, we use the engine only when we need it. And we get more sailing pleasure out of that.

“When necessary”, and reliability

Many skippers tell me they want the engine to be there ‘when necessary’ and often they mean: to resist a storm. From the shore point of view this sounds reasonable. But sorry, in the four occasions I was in a storm, the diesel engine let us down three times. Once it was the sludge from the tank, stirred into the diesel by the pounding waves, blocking the fuel filters. Once it was sea water splashed through the exhaust pipe into the engine and stopped the engine, and once it was some wet or broken electronics on the engine. On these occasions, it was the reefed sails that helped us out and brought us to safety.

Only the fourth time, it was in Force 9 on an old-fashioned sailing lugger, we sometimes ran the old engine for comfort purposes. But on board was a dedicated engineer for the maintenance. But, also in this case, we relied on the sails to get us home safely.

A marinized engine is a beautiful piece of technique, but all thousands of parts are vulnerable to moist, salt, temperature differences, and (the main cause) a lack of the so necessary maintenance to keep it all running.

Realize that you need to know an awful lot of a diesel engine before you can oversee what can be the cause of a defect. And, even of more value: how you can prevent defects. If you are a yacht skipper and you are not a yacht engineer yourself, please do not count on the engine, especially not the complex, computerized engines. Focus on your sails and your sailing for reliability. And, with a wink: also don’t use more sails than you need.

So, we sail, also in heavy weather. Perhaps we will use our electric engines as auxiliary in a storm. To give a little bit of extra propulsion and make our leeway smaller. The chance that electric engines will work in stormy circumstances is much bigger, because:

  • Salt, water or moisture don’t affect the watertight engines and controllers
  • They are not sensitive to moving and shaking
  • There are hardly moving parts (only a rotor and shaft)
  • In general, they are maintenance free.

Electric engines and controllers are closed and free of moist, saltwater, oil. The mean time between failure is large and the maintenance is many times smaller than for a combustion engine.

“Range”

Often yacht skippers ask for the range on the engine, with of our battery bank, our ‘fuel tank’. Their yacht has a 200 litres diesel tank and they can sail 300 miles with it. They say. But they never tested it, so I think in the first storm it will stop within 3 miles. They had better set sails.

And honestly, I don’t know what our “range” is. Our Fibercon sails already did 40,000 nautical miles. O, you mean the engines? We never did, but we can use the engines for 2 days on 2 knots on a flat sea, so that would be 100 miles. So we can reach any wind still harbour or bay.  But we like sailing. Even with a tiny bit of wind, we can motor sail endlessly with a little bit of power, as long as we have a little bit of sun in the solar panels to feed the engines. We love it and a guest once called it ‘sun sailing’. You feel with your ship a part in balance with nature.

We have another view on the “range”. Last week, on our trip to Madeira we sailed for two days with 25 knots of wind (6 Beaufort) and the only thing we did with our motors was to use them as alternators. So, to fill our battery bank, our ‘fuel tank’. We arrived 100% full. We are quite happy with this range. 😉

Manoeuvring

We intend to use our two engines to manoeuvre us from a harbour straight towards the sailing area. Marinas are designed very space efficient; manoeuvring your yacht on sails into or out of a box is virtually impossible. But when out of the marina, we hoist a sail.

When we go anchor up and we have some space, we enjoy to manoeuvre ourselves out sailing. The engines are stand by (electric engines are always stand by, come to think of it), and sometimes we use them for some seconds. And this feels a bit like a loss, because we like the sailing.

A marina is planned and designed to berth as many boats as possible. An engine is obligatory, sailing is often forbidden

River sailing; 2 knots through the water is our leisure speed

Sometimes when we are inshore and we want to travel further on a river with no wind or against us, we use the engines. We sail with the tide then, and make about 2 knots through the water. Why 2 knots?

First, we go with the tide, so the current adds it up to 3 or 4 knots. Second, we don’t want to make miles, there is no target. And if so, we are there already: on our yacht on a river, enjoying, sight-seeing, exploring, discovering.

Third reason is that we don’t hear our silent engines at all anymore. Ever sailed on a river in complete silence, with just the sound of a bird, a bee, a fly? Last reason is that we want to make sure we always have enough energy left for the unexpected. Like we do with our water, our food, everything. And just for the sheer beauty of physics: did you know that doubling your speed means you use a staggering 2 X 2 X 2 times, is 8 times more energy?

Main thing is the philosophy: we only want to use what we need. So, this is about getting more; not about ‘using less’. We experience nature more and we feel in balance with our environment.

Sailing a river slowly with the tide current, and without hearing the engine and in complete silence. It is one of our precious experiences that we get extra, when we use only what we need.
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Use only what you need (2)- cooking

Last blog we promised to show you that we only use the energy we need. First, we show the use of our equipment in the galley, the ship’s kitchen.

Here, Inge opens the microwave. On top the induction cooker, to her right is the water cooker and the bread baking machine, to her left in the corner the lit of the fridge/freezer. We will cover it all here.

Heating water

Before Ya, we always used a kettle and a gas stove to heat the water for our coffee and tea. The heat of the flame and fumes go around the kettle and… are still hot over the kettle. That heat is all lost. 

Now we use a water heater, a cooker. Let us have a look:

  • If you poor water in, you see a level meter. So, you only cook the water you need.
  • The heating element is built in the bottom, not at the side.This way it gives all the heat to the water to be cooked. So, you only use the energy you need.
  • The body of the heater and the lid are double skinned: insulation. The heating process does not lose heat to the outside.
  • It cooks fast, so there is hardly time to ‘leak’ heat. 
A water cooker with a level meter (not shown), the heating element inside, and complety double skinned. It saves you 80% of energy compared to a kettle on a gas stove.

Compared to the kettle on the gas stove, we save about 80% of the energy. While we only use what we need with the electric heater, most of the energy created by the gas combustion, ends up in the form of steam. You cannot use it to heat up your room, because the steam consist of water damp and CO2. So, this means you must ventilate your room well, for your own health and to keep your room free of moisture. 

Cooking with induction and hay box 

The induction cooker is high tech. The induction technique gives energy through a (safety) glass to the steel bottom of the pan, and then that pan bottom gets hot. That place is exactly the place where you need the heat. The induction cooker saves you about 50 to 55% of the heat if you compare it with cooking on gas stoves or the old-fashioned electric heating stoves.

Our induction cooker can heat two pans, but that is plenty because of the combination with the hay box.

But we can do better. We go from high to low tech. In Grandma’s time, before we had the overflow of fossil fuels, everybody was careful with the fuels, because they were expensive. So, Grandma cooked her rice and vegetables in a pan, and the moment it was hot, she took it from the fire and the pan went straight in the ‘hay box’ 

The hay box was a box with hay. It insulates. It keeps the heat in the pan. The rice or vegetables were cooked slowly. Most food is cooked in 1/3 extra time compared to the time it takes when you cook it on a stove. If you start cooking the things that need most time, you don’t lose any time. 

On a moving ship it has the extra advantage that the hot pan stays in a safe place.

Our hay box is a simple drawer with PIR insulation. You use the heat of the pan’s content to get it cooked. It saves us 30% on energy. 

We modernized it a bit. We took PIR foam, put it in a drawer, and with the pan inside we cover it with a ‘Hooimadam’, a cotton cover filled with good old-fashioned wool. This modern ‘hay box’ saves us energy again. We save another 30%. 

And finally, as we showed you some blogs ago, we use a pressure cooker to speed cooking up just a bit more, and save even more time and energy on cooking.

So, when we cook with the induction cooker, pressure cooker and hay box we can easily use 20% of the energy we used in the old, fossil days. That’s a reduction of, indeed: 80%.

How much do you use at home?

Heating up in the micro wave

About 70% of the electricity is converted to little radio waves. These radio waves make water molecules move. By moving and colliding, there is friction, and friction makes heat. 

It means that the water in the food gets hot. Water is generally the main part, so your food gets hot ‘from the inside’. 

This is ideal to heat up food. Because you don’t have to heat up a pan first. And, when mixing the hot and cold food in a pan, the lid is off, so much of the heat flies away.
Instead, the microwave uses 70% of the electricity input to really heat up your food. That is a loss of only 30%. And the job is done quickly.

The microwave has an efficiency of 70%, but this complete 70% is all used to heat up your food. This is much more efficient than heating up in pan.

Bread baking machine instead of an oven

For small, private use, the oven is a real energy consumer. But we like fresh baked bread. That is why we use a bread baking machine. 

The old-fashioned way with kneading the dough, etcetera, costs a lot of work and energy. Not with the bread baking machine. You simply put the water, flour, salt, yeast et cetera in the pot, push some buttons and off the machine goes.
The machine itself is closed, double skinned, is economic on the heat, so, it uses only what it needs to make the bread.

We tried to measure the difference in energy use between oven and bread baking machine and even though we could not pin it down to exact numbers it saves about 30 to 50%.

The fridge and the freezer

If you only want to use what you need when cooling (and heating), only 3 things are important:

  • Insulation
  • Insulation
  • Insulation

So that is what we did. Our refrigerator is surrounded by a 15 centimetre pack of PIR foam. The bottom has more than 20 cm of PIR insulation, and the lit, where the cold exchange is less, only 8. Now the cold stays en and we only use a tiny bit of energy. So little, that we even don’t notice it in our energy household.
In the tropics and subtropics, the 50 Watt equipment runs on 3 to 4 times an hour for 6 minutes. For the 35 litre fridge we note about 2-4 degrees Celsius, and for the 25 litre freezer we sometimes hit the 11 degrees. 

Please don’t believe designers automatically design a good fridge or freezer for you. They ‘economize’ on the insulation, to ‘give’ you more space inside. So, then you need a really powerful cooling device. The designers may well design this thing right under your refrigerator. So, the heat exchanger under it heats up your fridge again. To get all this idiotic power design effective, the cooling equipment has to be extremely powerful: about 4 or 5 times stronger than what we need for our complete fridge and freezer.

Sorry to tell you, but on the market, we only found bad ‘energy-guzzling’ refrigerators and freezers. On sailboats you see that some skippers, aware of their limited energy and batteries, have become the slave of their own badly designed fridges. They run the engine 2 times a day to make electricity. Or they buy an enormous surface of solar panels, to compensate for the loss of energy by the fridge. Energy wise, it is like filling up a colander with water. 

This is why some yachties simply stopped using fridges. A pity! We love cold yoghurt, a cool beer, and tapas. So, we cool only what we need.

Our fridge and our freezer box (just visible) are an arm’s length deep. In contrairy to the fridges and freezers of all yachts we know, ours is just a tiny consumer. The cause: our fridge and freezer box is packed by a thick (about 15 cm) layer of PIR foam.

The extra comfort of using only what you need.

Our galley, our kitchen, is widely appreciated for its comfort. Making tea water is done 3 times quicker than usual. The induction cooker is easy to use and safe. The microwave is convenient for heating food quickly, and the bread baking machine is a joy.

We have no gas, so no moisture getting into your upholstery. It brings comfort. 

We have no danger of too much fumes in a small space. We have no gas, so no risk on explosion or fire. So, this is safer. 

And by the way, we have no costs for the gas, and all equipment is cheaper or equally expensive as gas equipment. We did need to make a first investment in an inverter, that converts our battery power to the 230Volt that all the equipment needs. If you count the costs of the gas bottles you will use for many years, you will probably find a break even point.

And on top of being pleasant, more comfortable, safer and cheaper, it is better. It is the ethical thing. This way, we can live now without compromising the future of our children, of all next generations.Like most people, we like to use things.
But not more. We only want to use what we need.

You might also enjoy:

https://www.noonsite.com/report/insights-how-to-save-energy-when-cooking-onboard/

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Three ways to sail and live fossil free for ever

We live and sail a rather comfortable and luxury life. But we live fossil free. But? No; it is And, not But. We only take care for three things and we advise you to put them into practice.

Three ways to achieve a fossil free life

First: Use only what you need.  That makes sense, doesn’t it? Second: Use only what you need.  Starts to sound familiar?

On ‘Ya’ we use so little, that we generate the energy we need. By solar, wind and hydro generation. (Photo: www.saltycolours.com)

Now guess what the third thing would be? Exactly. Use only what you need. You can stop reading now and bring it in practice. Because from here we only give examples on how we live fossil free, having adapted these three rules, or this attitude.  Or you can read more if you want to have a glance.

At a glance

Here under a glance of what we will show you in the next series of articles:

  • Cooking. In the galley we cook with 20 to 30% of the energy compared to the fossil way of cooking. So, we save 70-80%. And we still enjoy la belle cuisine.
  • Transport. When sailing our sailing yacht ‘Ya’ we save about 80% of the energy compared to other sailing yachts. (and about 99% compared to a motor yacht).
  • Heating. When in a mild winter, like here on the Guadiana when it occasionally gets below freezing temperature, the yacht does not need a heater or stove. 
  • DIY Energy generation. Because we use so little energy, we provide for it by ourselves (solar, wind, hydro). 

The benefits of using only what you need

First: we want to halt the deterioration of the Earth where next generations will live on. That is our main reason.
Using only what you need, brings other benefits. The fossil free life brings more comfort, with less noise, moist, fumes (toxic or not) and hazardous risks. And, autarkic life on energy gives us the freedom to stay at the most beautiful off-grid spots without polluting them.

You keep money in your pocket, because you spend less on (fossil) energy. It saves lots of tax money too. Tax money is now going to subsidizing fossil fuels, wind turbine parks and solar fields. If you don’t need to build those, you can spend it on other preventive measures.

All this motivates you to check the energy meter, to get energy awareness. We find this fun to do and we notice our guests find it fun as well. It feels better in the ethical way, especially towards your next generations. Realize, more and more children now are not primarily interested in inheriting money, but in having a good life on ‘Planet A’ (because there is no ‘Planet B’).

If we use only what we need on a large scale, the solar fields we think we have to build now, can be much smaller. Perhaps that surface would even fit on roofs of houses and buildings. This would mean more space for nature and less money to spend.

Three constraints in using only what you need

To start with the first constraint: man is a creature of habit. It is your attitude not to change things. So, you have to be convinced yourself. You must want to change your lifestyle in the best way you see fit, and preferably: like it. And last but not least, you must turn this new way of life into a habit.

Second constraint: consuming less means that you are a less interesting customer for many things. The voices telling you to consume more are presently much louder than the voices telling you to consume less, or differently. This means: don’t count on the market to tell you what to do, count on your own common sense. You have to listen carefully to your inner voice and buy, take and use only what you need.

Finally, thinking the government will help us out is a constraint. Using only what you need is a preventive action, and governments are usually not really good at prevention. When there is a problem, they tend to build things, preferably big things. They take the current energy consumption, although ex-treme-ly high now, as a given fact. They call it ‘Energy Demand’ and try to replace all fossil fuel use by generating an equal amount of fossil free energy. Mainly by subsidizing huge wind turbines, enormous solar fields, and then some more, on an ever larger scale. Although these things cost an awful lot of (tax) money, they seem worth it because you can see it in the paper, on TV.

Also, the media are less interested because you cannot see prevention of an issue. Prevention solves issues inherently, and that looks almost boring. Did you ever see a TV show or paper telling about a problem that has not existed? A fire that did not occur?

Only when every solution failed and the crisis is really deep, governments will finally take preventive action and the media will report on it.

If we only use what we need on a large scale, we would only need a fraction of the wind turbines we think we have to build now. This saves sea, it saves lost whales and other species sensitive for the low sounds the turbines make.

Let’s try to prevent that. Next week we tell how we use only the energy we need for cooking.

You might also like:

https://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Your-Energy-Consumption

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Ya’s fossil free dinghy

Inge explains and shows Ya’s fossilfree dinghy

Friends came over to visit us. To reach shore, we had to row against the strong current in river Guadiana. Not an easy task, even with our extended oars. These experienced rowers advised us to start using an electric engine. As a matter of fact, they had one they did not use. So they sent it over.

And now we enjoy the luxury of a powered dinghy. A dinghy that puts a smile upon faces everywhere we go, because it moves magically silently. Even the guy who operates the dinghy gas station in Faro gave us a thumbs up.