Navy Spends $33 Million For Hybrid of the High Sea 210
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by
samzenpus
from the batteries-not-included dept.
from the batteries-not-included dept.
coondoggie writes "Some might call it an enormous floating Prius, but others will call it a step in the right direction: A new hybrid electric engine for US Navy ships that promises to save up to 12,000 barrels of oil a year per ship.
The folks who brought you the Predator unmanned flying aircraft, General Atomics, this week got $32.7 million to develop a proof-of-concept Hybrid Electric Drive (HED) system for a full-scale demonstration on board the Navy's DDG 51 Class destroyers.
DDG 51 destroyers are powered by General Electric gas turbines capable of moving the ships along at over 30 knots or about 35 mph. The General Atomics system would meld into this system and let the ship use electric power for slow-speed maneuvers. The engines would provide more power as the ship needed to go faster."
Re:What would happen... (Score:3, Insightful)
we ca ask the electrical/diesel submarines .... not new tech at all
Re:What would happen... (Score:2, Insightful)
the ship use electric power for slow-speed maneuvers
But I think this may be a hybrid like a train.
Re:What would happen... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So that's where our tax dollars go. (Score:4, Insightful)
$100 per barrel= costs at the refinery.
The ships are generally in nasty, remote locations. Factor in the cost of building a supply ship and fueling that ship to get the fuel to the destroyer, PLUS escort, PLUS lost mission time and extra miles to go to refueling, and you will probably break even in the first year.
And then the ship has 30 more years to go.
I guess your tax dollars didn't go to elementary math & common sense education, aka high school :-)
Re:So that's where our tax dollars go. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lower fuel consumption would (slightly) increase the ability to operate at the end of a long, inadequate, intermittent, or otherwise problematic supply chain, which could also be nice.
Too bad we don't have this already (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What would happen... (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably similar to what happens when one of the Soviet-era sodium-cooled nuclear submarine gets hit... really a torpedo hit that breaches the hull is going to be a Bad Day no matter what.
Re:Back when I was a kid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, just because the general principle has been in use somewhere else, doesn't mean you can't improve on it - and scaling something up is not necessarily a trivial matter.
Re:So that's where our tax dollars go. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
What about nuclear batteries? (Score:3, Insightful)
The REAL reason for electric boats (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you say "Rail Gun" or "LASER"?
These new weapons technologies (needed for interception of ballistic or hypersonic projectiles) will require a colossal amount of electric power. If the ship is already geared up to be capable of storing a lot of power in its batteries, a major hurdle in the deployment of these weapons are overcome.
Maybe they could even use the tremendous kinetic energy of the ship moving at high speed to generate electricity from the motors. Probably only useful in an emergency because it makes your ship a sitting duck!