There are many problems with the development of
effecient electric propulsion system for non military
applications may of which can be blamed on a lack of available
funds for this purpose. unfortunatly until private
industry can see the market the development of such will
be limited to a few visionaries who are willing to
spend the time and their own money to do this. We can
however benifit from other sources of of development.
private industry has had a need for years for corrosion
resistant motors. These are avaible off the shelf, as a
matter of fact I know of one company who is producing
all stainless motors as cheaply as other so callled
sever duty motors. Servo motors have been in sever duty
for over 20 years and some are avaible with effencies
in excess of 90%. <br> In the late 60's and early 70
I served on board a nuclear submarine. We had an
emergency propulsion system that used a 150 HP motor to
drive an 8000 ton displacement submarine through the
water at a speed in excess of 4 knots, under battery
power. Now thats not a speed record but it is very
inpressive when you think about it. You have a 38ft
displacemtn hull. you water line length is prounbly around
32ft. That means your a max. effecient speed is around
8 knotts. I firmly believe that an electric
propulsion system could be put into you boat which could
propel you through the water at 8 knots for 6-8 hours at
a streatch and would not cost you much more than
the cost of replacing you diesel. The real problem is
in selecting the batteries to use. I could go into
more details on this matter however I shouldn't hog up
so much space. If you want more information as to my
thoughts please feel free to E mail me at my web address
donaldbaer@...
