Re: Electric Drive and COGAD

Doug Houseman wrote:

There is good and bad of using electric drive...

Good -

1) removal of reduction gears (e.g. the transmission)
2) Shorter shaft lengths
3) More precise speed control
4) Faster reversing
5) lower crew size
6) the ability to move the engineering spaces around on the ship -
moving the larger spaces higher - above the water line
7) ability to increase the number of water tight compartments
8) ability to minimize heat signatures
9) reduction in piping in the ship
10) ability to use one set of engines for both weapons systems and
propulsion
11) ability to size engines better for maximum fuel efficiency (e.g. 6
to 10 diesels instead of 1 gas turbine)
12) ability to run the engines at a more efficient speed

Bad -
1) Loss of energy in conversion to electric power and back
2) Increase in wiring on the ship
3) inability to fix key parts of the engineering systems with the
ship's
company (OBTW - similar issues exist with gas turbines)
4) Water and electricity issues
5) Cost
6) lack of long term underway experience

Thanks for the list! I can see how issues with water might arise,
bur I'd also think that technology could take care of that. I work in
the chemical industry, where we have to have electrical hardware that
won't be an ignition source. It's also true that underground electrical
cables on land can be in water, indeed they may requre it for cooling.

Others have commented on how some of the problem is that DC systems
aren't desirable, but now there are reliable AC systems.

To date the bad have out weighed the good in ship designs. There have
been a number of programs to look at electric drive and even super
conducting electric drive on surface ships - all are still in the R&D
phase.

OBTW - you can thank the various military services for the battery
technology that will eventually go in cars and trucks - since they
wanted to provide high density safe batteries for use in combat and
even
on ships and submarines...Yet another military spin off.

I hadn't heard that! Great!

In the US we very often subsidize new technology through the
military. Now we're saying we want to develop alternative energy
sources, that don't use fossil fuels and don't emit CO2. I don't see how
we could do that through the military, and historically we don't have as
much experience with other large research paradigms.

Dennis
.

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