I read an article about that fire, and later I was looking for a cruise to go on. One of them was on a ‘green’ ship, which means it had batteries...passed up that opportunity.
And I’m still having trouble understanding just how large battery banks are supposed to help a cruise ship save energy. I can understand cars, trucks, and other vehicle that are in stop-and-go traffic and thus can use regenerative braking to recover some of the energy associated with stopping, and yes, eventually even cruise ships stop and maybe use reverse thrust once in a while (such as in port) ...but how, exactly, would they regenerate energy and if they did, the amount would be tiny, relative to traveling hundreds of miles through ocean?
It seems to me to be more of a gimmick than even replacing buses with trains.
This ship was a passenger ferry, which I assume travels a short distance, stops at the dock, and then goes back. While at the dock, batteries could be recharged.
“One of them was on a ‘green’ ship, which means it had batteries...passed up that opportunity.”
Probably an LNG.
I think the real driving force is the emissions while in port. Conventional diesel or bunker fuel emissions in port can be very bad because ships don’t have the same emission controls as stationary sources.
Of course, the companies can pitch “Look! We don’t use any of that evil, stinking carbon” and “Look! Green, green, green!!” to a gullible public.
It makes a lot of sense to me. Diesel electric engines have been used on locomotives for decades. I would imagine it would allow you to run your diesel engines at their optimal power/fuel values pretty much continually, and use the electrics for any changes in power output you actually need to apply to the screws. I would imagine that such changes in power usage would be pretty low on a ship making a long cruise, but I don't know enough about how modern ships function to be able to say one way or another. If the freaking greenies weren't so down on diesel, I would imagine you'd see d/e power being used in more places. Hybrid tech can make a lot of sense, but you have to actually approach it as an engineering problem, not as a religious one, like "environmentalists" do. Most ideas that come out of the environmental movement are unworkable, stupid and have long term consequences that are never considered.