The Wet Web
Helen Gazeley watches an IWA webinar looking at the future of canal boat propulsion.
BC – Before Coronavirus – climate change seemed the world’s most pressing threat. Of course, it hasn’t disappeared, and one contributor – car use – will possibly increase on pre-lockdown levels as people shun public transport.
So, the Government’s recent announcement that, in 2035, it intends to ban production of diesel and petrol vehicles in preference for the cleaner electric vehicle is perhaps particularly timely.
It’s a subject focusing the minds of the Inland Waterway Association’s Sustainable Propulsion Group. While carbon emissions from the waterways are comparatively small, it seems inevitable that boats will draw attention, particularly in built-up areas where running engines to charge batteries is already regarded by local residents as a nuisance.
Three members of the eightstrong team, Bowman Bradley, Malcolm Bridge and Rupert Smedley, took to Zoom in an IWA webinar to explain their progress. Between them, they represented a good spectrum of the vessels found on our canals – a historic vessel (Rupert), a standard diesel four-cylinder two-litre (Bowman) and an electric-powered boat (Malcolm). The group’s aim is to develop a vision of how the waterways might become more sustainable in the not-toodistant future.
The problems, it turns out, are more about cost and infrastructure than technical hitches. Improved technologies for charging up batteries to run electric motors in narrow and widebeam vessels are already available – or just around the corner – and these vessels even offer an advantage over the vehicles for which these technologies are currently being developed.
Compared with road transport, narrowboats don’t have a weight issue, have plenty of space for a battery bank, and power requirements are within current capabilities. “The narrowboat is a very, very good thing to develop these technologies,” said Bowman.
While the upcoming technology can’t currently compete with the price of diesel, it’s heartening that it is, in fact, more efficient, partly because a big propeller moving slowly is more efficient than a fast-moving small propeller. “An electric motor will actually drive a bigger propeller than a two-litre diesel engine,” said Bowman.
“It uses no energy when idling, so an electric boat isn’t using energy while waiting in the lock. It uses a small generator at maximum efficiency, with significantly better fuel consumption.” And a plus is that you can have alternative charging options to the generator.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, solar panels don’t star in the vision of charging options, even though already well established on many narrowboats. “I think it’s difficult to imagine even with increasing technology, certainly on a dull English day, that PV cells are ever going to provide enough power to drive the boat permanently,” said Bowman, “but they can make a useful contribution, we think.”
The group sees the hydrogen fuel cell as the ultimate power provider, especially for new builds. Hydrogen is quick to refuel and allows a reasonable distance of travel. However, we can’t get there in one jump, the problem being that if no one invests in infrastructure as there are few boats to use it, no one’s going to buy a hydrogen-powered boat or a battery-powered boat until there’s infrastructure to provide recharging or refuelling.
“That’s why we say the narrowboat of the future will have to have a degree of flexibility built into it,” said Bowman. “And probably the intermediate step is to start with a small diesel generator (to help charge the battery) and perhaps the ability to convert to hydrogen at a later date.”
For Malcolm the crucial intermediate stage on the road to hydrogen is the solid oxide fuel cell, already widely produced and which runs on hydrocarbons like propane, as well as hydrogen. “A very small fuel cell – maybe a 1kW – is probably sufficient to power a 50-60ft boat. It’s more efficient than a generator, and because it can be run 24 hours a day, your battery bank can also be reduced.
“At the point we can identify something suitable there, we’ve probably got a system that is costcompetitive with diesel.” Once installed, it would be possible to change the gas tank for a hydrogen tank when hydrogen became available.
TheIWAwassetuptosavethe waterways network. “If we are going to save the network again, we have to find a way to get boats round the network without using hydrocarbons,” said Bowman.
If you’d like more detail on the likely future of canalboat propulsion, the webinar is available online (https:// youtu.be/gy-pYqnme3Y). The IWA’s upcoming webinars can be found on its website (www. waterways.org.uk).