Shore supply electrics

[j.sabourn]

#19. Vic you mention the Pendennis was this a castle ship ? if so I would suppose she had all the modern equipment going at the time. The DC ships I was on had to have an inverter or converter whatever they are called for the gyro compass which ran on a/c only and involved carbon piles to keep the current constant or else the gyro wandered. I never saw a lecky on a d/c ship was always the 3 Engineers extra duties. On the a/c ships must have been a holiday for the 3rd. Although he must have lost a lot of overtime. Cheers JWS

[robpage]

In reply to Vic I think the Windsor was 440 VAC with a combination of Harland and Wolff diesels and Alan steam turbo alternators .

The Pendennis Castle as an DC ship had a room immediately above the main switchboard where there were I think 4 off DC driven alternators these provided power from a DC supply in to give you a 240 V AC output I believe that was for some lighting and things like the giro but we are talking 1970 here so I could be wrong . The dc driven alternators were in my time they're absolutely trouble-free . I can't remember if the last two of the big male boats wer 440 volt 60 cycle but every ship I have been on since those days mainly German or Scandinavian built always seems to be 440 volt 60 cycle instead of the UK standard of 400 volt 50 cycle . This of course saved a fortune in copper when building a ship . I always suspected that this was one of the main troubles with the British and Commonwealth desire to run the Rolls-Royce d series diesel generators as I'm absolutely convinced in my head that they were designed to run at 1500 RPM which would have given 50 Cycles but we run at 1800 RPM to give the 60 Cycles and when you are running them at 20% more revs you still kept the service hours so they done 20% more work in the same hours lending to them having a nasty tendency to check conrods out through the side of the crank case .

[j.sabourn]

Going back to more mundane things like washing machines and hoovers. When we emigrated out here we stuck everything into a container and brought out with us, only instead of the kitchen sink we brought out the carpets. everything electricai however seemed to have a short life span could this have been because the UK was 50 cycles and out here is I believe 60 ? JWS

[robpage]

Everythinmg runs 20% faster , the speed (N) rpm = 120 x frequency (f) Hz / number of motor poles (P) , so a two pole motor at 50 Hz is 3000 rpm 60 Hz 3600 rpm , the electronics is transformed to 12 VDC so you get away with it mainly

[happy daze john in oz]

The Pendennis was DC the Vaal AC, what was the Windsor, any ideas Rob?
Vic

The Windsor was DC and yes may well have used shore power.
I know as officers steward that on Wednesdays prior to sailing the engineers would spend the day prepping up to full power.

Of course there were many crew on UCL who were AC/DC/

Any crew member who had a record player or tape recorder had to have a converter from dc to ac to enable them to work.

[vic mcclymont]

There we have it from Rob and John the Windsor Castle in keeping with the crew was AC/DC.
Rob, all of the UK ships that I did design work were 60 cycles as that was the maritime standard.
Vic

[Lewis McColl]

The idea of cold ironing is nothing new. But it is not just about the emissions of CO2, don't forget there is also CO(carbon monoxide) NOx(Nitrogen Oxide) is also highly toxic along with other exhaust emissions. Some one said that power stations also pump out a lot of Toxic emissions as well but at least it is not as bad as having 25/50 ships pumping out there crap, Also a lot of power stations these days are now fuelled by LNG which certainly is a cleaner emission than say the likes of Coal fired stations.
When I first got into LNG carriers when we were loading or discharging the vapour was always returned to shore side and in my early days it was just flared off (burnt) Now in some ports the return vapour is reliquefied and sent back to the ship as cargo. In other ports they allow the ship to continue using the gas generated to be used to fuel the boilers there by causing less pollution in port areas. Modern LNG carriers are even more fuel efficient as they are now nearly (all new builds) are motor ships but are dual fuelled either by low sulphur fuels or LNG.

[Shaun Gander]

Los Angles forces ships to shut down their own power plant and connect to shore side.
They claim that it reduces CO2 emissions, can't see how as shore plant produces CO2.
Vic

It's the same logic that electric cars are enviromentally friendly as they don't produce emissions. What is conviently forgotten is how the electricity that charges these cars is produced...

SDG

[happy daze john in oz]

It's the same logic that electric cars are enviromentally friendly as they don't produce emissions. What is conviently forgotten is how the electricity that charges these cars is produced...

SDG

And there lies the problem, how to produce power without using coal, gas etc.
A study here in Oz has shown that if all our vehicles were electric the load on the grid would be up to five times what it is now.
Solar and wind would not be able to generate enough on a constant reliable method.
So how do we manage it?

But as an aside I saw over the last week end of Easter some 5 service statins being built, so much for electric cars.

[Lewis McColl]

The way to go is the Hydrogen cell only thing that comes out the exhaust pipe is H2O.
But as usual someone will find a down side to everything.
How is this for being negative in your thinking

Fuel Cells are not Pollution Free: Where Will the Water Go? to me Big Oil is not in any rush just yet to save the planet.