OLD NICK GOES GREEN

The adoption of electric propulsion in the marine industry is one of the biggest challenges we have ever faced. Environmental, political and legislative pressure are setting deadlines for change that will be difficult to meet, and unless we can communicate clear and positive information to boat owners about the solutions available for new boats or how they can retro-fit an electric engine to their existing boat, we will fall short of what is required.

With this in mind, when Paul Sumpner (CTO of Digital Yacht) was forced, due to the pandemic, to delay his dream of moving on to a new narrowboat after selling his house, it gave him the time to really research whether it was feasible to have a ‘live aboard’ electric narrowboat that could be cruised all year round.

During his investigation, he was surprised at the lack of good, objective information on the subject. For anyone considering ‘Going Electric’ there was no clear path to follow and what little information could be found, was often contradictory.

Reference design With his technical background and passion for the subject, Paul was determined not to just find a solution for himself, but also to document and share his experiences. By creating an electric narrowboat ‘reference design’, he hoped to give others the confidence and information needed to follow the same path. Fortunately for Paul, he had already chosen Ortomarine, one of the few UK boat builders with first-hand experience of producing fully electric and hybrid electric narrowboats, to build Old Nick.

During the initial discussions with Ortomarine, it was clear that there was a large price difference between a traditional diesel-powered boat and a hybrid electric powered boat. Paul was keen that the reference design would not only be technically strong but also more affordable, to encourage adoption.

With this in mind, a study was conducted of the various designs and equipment available, and during this study it became clear that, especially for a boat builder, there were real cost and productivity savings to be made by sourcing as much equipment from as few suppliers as possible.

With this new consideration, one company - Vetus - stood out. With their large existing product catalogue and new E-Line 10KW electric engine, the decision was made.

Old Nick is not the first electric serial hybrid narrowboat, but it is the first where the complete hybrid system was manufactured and supplied by a single company. It is also the first vessel in the UK to be powered by the new Vetus E-Line engine.

Indeed, the electric engine, diesel generator, prop shaft, stern tube fittings and prop are all Vetus, making the design and installation much easier, with no worries of incompatibility or having to deal with lots of different companies. With better package pricing, reduced shipping costs, single point of contact and so on, the direct and hidden savings for the boatbuilder can be significant.

Better batteries With the electric serial hybrid system decided upon, Paul needed to find a suitably large battery bank, and a battery management system that could keep the battery bank in good condition. Although Lithium batteries (LiFePo4) are currently attracting attention as a good replacement for traditional domestic batteries, for electric propulsion a large 48v 600Ah (minimum) battery bank is needed.

To use Lithiums in this configuration is both expensive and difficult to source/

The completed battery bank on Old Nick

Old Nick has an extensive NMEA 2000 and Ethernet network on board construct. The decision was therefore taken to create the battery bank using 24 x 2v 800Ah Lead Carbon batteries from Leoch, which cope well with partial charge, low temperatures and cell balancing in a large bank.

Power management is a serious challenge on pleasure boats and when you are also reliant on electricity for propulsion, the stakes become even higher. It is not an area where you can cut corners, and so it was an easy decision to choose Victron to provide the power management system, along with 12 x 160W semi-flexible solar panels from Photonic Universe that should allow 100 per cent free energy cruising for at least six months of the year.

Essential networking Another interesting feature of Old Nick’s design is the extensive NMEA 2000 and Ethernet network on board. More common on yachts and powerboats, NMEA 2000 is the marine industry’s standard for electronic data communication.

As Old Nick will be Paul’s floating workshop, it is important that he has a working NMEA 2000 network on board to use for testing and development. As the new Vetus E-Line is also NMEA 2000 compatible, using their V-CAN to NMEA 2000 Converter, Old Nick will be the first boat to use the new Electric Propulsion PGNs published by the NMEA this year.

Old Nick is a 58.5ft Tyler-Wilson hull narrowboat designed and built by Ortomarine and was launched on 10 December at Droitwich Spa Marina. Paul and Kay intend to continuously cruise the UK canals, posting news and performance data on their blog, thesumpnersafloat.com, which already contains a great deal of useful reference material on the design, build and systems used on their narrowboat.