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.
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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.
Hybrid technology isn't as wild looking as adding football-sized kites to big ships, like the Beluga SkySails ship does, but it could do the job.
The Navy talked about the hybrid system in congressional testimony in July as a way to reduce costs in the destroyer program. Such equipment would more fully interconnect the mechanical-drive components on each ship, producing a hybrid propulsion plant, the Navy said. The addition of this equipment would reduce DDG-51 ship fuel use by about 16%. This option would have an engineering cost of $17.1 million and a recurring cost (including both equipment cost and installation cost) of $8.8 million per ship, the Navy stated.
The Navy has paid a lot of attention to the DDG-51 ships of late. This month signed Boeing to a five-year, $42.9 million contract to upgrade and support the Gigabit Ethernet networks it is building on its guided missile destroyers.
The Navy's Gigabit Ethernet Data Multiplex System (GEDMS) upgrades the current 100Mbps fiber-based backbone network to a 1Gbs redundant Ethernet mesh, bringing enhanced multimedia capability to the ships, the Navy said. The GEDMS is the heart and soul of the guided missile ships and basically handles ship-wide data transfers and supports navigation, combat, alarm and indicating, and damage control systems. It also is the underlying communications mechanism for the Aegis missile system which uses a system of radars to track and destroy targets.
According to the Navy, GEDMS was designed to replace the miles of point-to-point cabling, signal converters, junction boxes, and switchboards associated with conventional ship's cabling.
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EMP
What about electromagnetic pulses (EMPs)? Wouldn't using electric propulsion as primary means of propulsion put our ships at risk of floating dead in the water if they were near a nuclear blast or possibly target by high altitude airbust nukes designed to deliver EMPS?
The electric propulsion is a
The electric propulsion is a secondary system according to the article. Depending on how the primary diesel turbines are managed and/or shielded they might still run. The GEDMS however, "the heart and soul" of the ship that controls the weapons, navigation, and you tube access, will likely be completely hosed. Go Navy!
EMP
I'm sure EMP was a consideration when designing the system...
Not to sure how up to date
Not to sure how up to date you guys are on this stuff but its relatively simple to sheild an electircal system from an EMP, i guarantee all of our war planes and ships are set up for this. Its just to expensive to do on civilian technology. It consists of rapping electircal components with two layers of insulated rubber with a copper component sandwiched in between. You pass current through the copper and it generates its own electromagnetic field that cancels out EMP's. I mean you really think that a $600Billion a year military won't be able to cope with the side effect from our biggest bomb which we've known about for decades?
IF you are being hit with
IF you are being hit with EMP from a nuclear blast you have bigger concern then the ship not moving. The weapon system would also be affect along with anything with a micro processor on board which is everything from navigation, to radar to general radio communication. So EMP not a big deal in term of affecting the ships movement. Also it is a hybrid so it should still work mechanically, but i don't know how integrated current destroyers are with computer anyways.
"one second after"
Is not reality - please don't go thinking our military isn't prepared for an EMP pulse.
really
beef, it's what's for dinner
EMP
what.. EMP? Enormously mighty penis? That's what she said!
EMP
Even with a mechanical drive, the propulsion/navigation will likely have some sort of electronic control, though I'm not sure about the eldest members of the fleet. So even then, and EMP would severely cripple their capability if they hadn't considered that a threat, which i'm sure they have. Then consider a submarine, if an EMP cut out your electronics, that means no more lights. With no more lights, the crew can't see anything inside as it would be pitch black, and would have a heck of a time trying to navigate or do anything useful. In that regard, I'm agreeing with Joe, the cost to properly shield the electronics is worth the price when you're talking multi-billion dollar warships intended to defend out country.
What a bargain
So, we're going to spend $33 million for the prototype, plus another $17.1 million for "engineering" and a recurring $8.8 million per ship.
That's going to save 12,000 barrels per year (per ship I assume). Well gee. Oil is what, $65 a barrel? So... We're going to drop over $50 million up front and a "recurring" $8.8 million per ship to save $780K per ship?
Awesome.
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