When you see a narrowboat chugging along the canal you can often tell the ones with a modern diesel engine. They're the quieter ones where people are talking to each other without the conversation being interspersed with "WHAT?" or "COME AGAIN!" or such like. You also can tell the ones with a traditional engine as these invariably have an entire room dedicated to the engine, with hatches open to show off the gleaming brasswork to those of us on the towpath who can only dream of ever having such a magnificent machine chug-chugging away as you deafen the local wildlife.
We break the mould a little bit here by having an electric motor; whilst not completely unheard of on the canal system, the vast majority of narrowbots do not have electric motors. They have deisel engines. Diesel engines rev lower than petrol ones, so they will provide high torque at low revs (which is useful when driving a propeller). Deisel engines are tried and tested, reliable, common technology. So there are many advantages to having one on the canal.
Why then, did we decide to go for an electric motor? That, my friend is a very good question. The main appeal to us was the cost saving. We will never have to buy deisel, and you may have noticed that fuel prices very rarely go down. So we should, in theory, save a substantial amount of money on that front. Additionally there is the environmental consideration. Burning fossil fuels is bad for us all, what with more air pollution, the increased likelihood of spilling deisel into the canal, the smells, etc. You know the score. With an electric motor we reduce the air pollution to pretty much zero, the chance of polluting the water with deisel is zero, there are no smells after a days cruise.
Now I'm not claiming the environmental impact is zero. After all the processes involved in manufacturing batteries, solar panels and motors can't be ignored. But it's nice that on a personal level we are limiting our impact to our immediate surroundings.
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| Before: Panels laid flat on the roof |
Previously the panels were just laid flat on the roof, but this doesn't allow us to tilt them towards the South in winter so with the new cabin (more on that to follow at a later date) we decided to have some mounts fabricated to hold the solar panels that we use to charge our batteries. Most boats will have one or two panels to keep a leisure battery topped up, however our batteries have a much larger capacity, so we have 8 panels. On a good day you can cruise indefinitely without running out of power as the panels are replacing what you're using for the motor.
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| Mounts along the left of the roof, Sophie driving at the back |
We went to visit Johnny (the same one who appeared in a photo in
Blacking Up) on his boat
Gyptian to buy some 6mm cable and set about mounting and wiring up the panels. We figured 6mm cable would be overkill but I'd rather over-specify to be on the safe side when it comes to electronics. Plus Johnny picked up a reel at a good price and passed that saving onto us so we only ended up spending £25 on cable.
I'd taken apart the wiring on the old panels so had a vague idea what I was doing. In theory it is fairly straightforward. You know how you put two batteries together in your walkman making sure that the positive end of one goes to the negative end of another? Well this is the same. But I was trying to wire up as we were mounting the panels as it was easier to wire them face-down. So every time I came to wire another panel I found I'd forgotten what the cable I had in my hand was for. Queue much unscrewing of junction boxes and re-checking of terminals and constantly repeating the mantra "positive to negative, positive to negative" and eventually I had everything wired.
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| Panels laid on the roof getting wired up |
In order to reduce the number of holes in our roof I decided to route the cables through a mushroom vent (see photo above). All of which are positioned under the solar panels. Convenient eh? You might even think we'd planned it that way! It also means that because the vents are sheltered heavy rain can't bounce up off the roof and come in through the mushroom vents. Not a common occurrence, but in
full British summer one that I imagine would be fairly annoying.
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| The first pair mounted and wired |
At this stage you are left with two ends of a cable that could, potentially, give you a bit of a shock. I left Sophie outside, posted the cable through the vent and headed inside. Very carefully poking cables into the connections without touching anything that might be live was a little interesting but everything went in without resorting to swear words and before I knew it we were drawing 26 amps.
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| 4 pairs all mounted and wired |
It's very satisfying to when you take something you know very little about, take it apart, replace and simplify the the wiring, and it still works when you put it all back together again! Add to that the fact that we can now tilt the panels rather than propping them up on paving slabs and paint cans - yes we actually did this, sorry - and the fact they are more secure now they're actually physically attached to the boat so stealing them is harder and the likelihood of having them blown off the roof (this has happened in the past, damaging the connections) is greatly reduced and you end up feeling pretty satisfied with yourself! AND I'm pretty sure all of the cable outer that I stripped off made its way into the bin.
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| Wing nuts allow the panels to be adjusted by hand |
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| The view from the front |
