Why Our 409kWh Hybrid Engine Room Is So Complicated | Hybrid Electric Trawler

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]409 kwatt hours of batteries. That's what we're putting in a Tangeroa in our hybrid electric conversion. But batteries are only the beginning.

[00:00:09]Motors, generators, chargers, cooling, fire suppression, isolation, wiring access. Every system has to fit and every decision affects the next one. We thought installing all of this equipment would be the hard part. Turns out first we have to figure out where everything can safely go.

[00:00:28]So, now that we've decided on the Roy Pal batteries, what all else are we going to have to fit in here? Yeah, >> this is where it gets kind of exciting.

[00:00:36]So, the beauty of this boat is you've got a big pallet to start with, right?

[00:00:42]Which is great. The problem of this boat is like every boat, it's about 2 feet too short. So, now it comes about how are we going to fit it in? So with the Roy Pal batteries occupying effectively the forward part of the service room and having now a machinery room for the generators in the backside the things that are unusual on a boat for people to consider with lithium batteries is we have to add a ventilation system for emergency purposes. So that's not to ventilate the batteries for dayto-day operation. That's simply there every battery has what we call a blister on one point of it. So if there is a a cell gases inside the battery module that blister will burst and there has to be a path for that vent that gas to exit. You get on average for every lithium cell you're going to have somewhere between 100 and 200 L of gas produced. So there's a lot of gas that comes off of it. But that does fail.

[00:01:43]>> And that gas has to go somewhere and preferably not in where you're living.

[00:01:47]So each module has one of these fittings on the back that we can attach the plumbing to. The Roy Pal battery pack comes with that vent system already attached to it >> or built that we can reattach to it when we reassemble it and it takes it to an exit point on each side of the battery bank which we will then run up onto the deck and either run them overboard so that ultimately any gas that would be produced would be sent out into the ocean to disperse. Um, so you don't carry that in the living space or the walking decks or the aft deck or something like that. Um, and then you also have to then add the firefighting system. So in this case, we're going to be incorporating a firefighting canister in every unique module.

[00:02:32]>> Okay.

[00:02:32]>> So, one of the things that's really started to evolve in the industry and and I'm happy to say I've I've been a part of this is that instead of trying to just manage the battery fire from the outside, i.e. when it's already going crazy and you're dealing with very high temperature. We are now incorporating unique firefighting inside each individual module. So that has the capacity to displace the oxygen, put the fire out and buy you some more time to manage the situation.

[00:03:01]>> Um so that is nice because it has no impact on our space at all. And then we have the external firefighting system and 100% not decided on which one it's going to be yet. Um but it's going to be a combination of a potassium based gas aerosol system. Um and then potentially a we'll put in some sprinklers so you have a deluge capability with this as well.

[00:03:26]>> Okay.

[00:03:26]>> Water is still unfortunately the best medium for managing a fire. Uh, but you don't want to apply it directly like a hose because it doesn't get the effect and you have to get everything very wet.

[00:03:37]You want to apply it like a mist system where you're introducing micro droplets of water that will effectively surround like a fog the battery bank. And that fog will reduce the temperature of the battery, making it much harder for the lithium fire to gain momentum if you want, okay?

[00:03:55]>> And have the energy to burn.

[00:03:56]>> So basically, you're using up all that energy, turning that fog into steam is what you're doing. So, you're pulling the heat out of the >> you're you're you're just simply by lowering the temperature of everything, you make it harder for that fire to get to its exist its uh threshold of burning.

[00:04:12]>> Perfect.

[00:04:12]>> Right. Where it's going to ignite. Um, and the advantage of this in this case, so you and I have had a lot of conversations about different chemistries on batteries. I've used hundreds of megawatt hour of NMC chemistry on commercial industrial batteries. LFP is a is a great chemistry with a little less energy density, typically a little less cycle life than what we did with NMC. So, it didn't work as well in commercial product. But here, you know, we've been able to fit 400 kilowatt hour uh without really too much drama in the space that we have as well as add in the three generators and having all of that energy density on this boat. That's a that's a lot of energy for keeping this thing moving through the water, right? And LFP in this case is, I believe, absolutely the right chemistry to work with simply because it does have a higher threshold of thermal runaway as a chemistry. Um, and combine that with the engineering of the Roy POW batteries with that built-in firefighting system, I really think even if you're going to have a cell failure, and we'll see that cell failure starting to occur long before it happens. So, we'll be able to isolate the bank and the module from operations >> and even if we need to remove the module and submerge it very directly.

[00:05:28]>> Yeah.

[00:05:28]>> Um if we to buy us some time to make sure the rest of the battery pack isn't going to become fire starter.

[00:05:35]>> Perfect. Now, one question I'm sure we're going to get uh or statement that we're going to get is and I've I've seen this already, lithium batteries produce oxygen, so you're not going to put it out. Can you touch on that?

[00:05:47]>> Yeah. Well, again when we talk about chemistry and selections of chemistries for lithium applications, um that statement is true. Okay, it is the least true with lithium iron phosphate. With NMC, u and we've used that. We did this, we tested car batteries 20 years ago. Um with an NMC battery, it can take two days for a battery that's been put on fire to completely extinguish before it becomes exhausted of energy. Um, with iron phosphate, it produces so little oxygen um that it is suppressible.

[00:06:23]>> Perfect.

[00:06:24]>> It's not impossible for it to burn, but it's very hard.

[00:06:27]>> Yes.

[00:06:27]>> For it to burn.

[00:06:29]>> And that's I guess they mostly produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is what their their big danger point is is what people say.

[00:06:35]>> Yes. All all all lithium batteries again will produce hydrogen.

[00:06:39]>> Okay.

[00:06:39]>> Uh iron phosphate just a little less hydrogen. So basically what we're trying to do with the suppression is get rid of the oxygen that helps the hydrogen burn.

[00:06:48]>> Well, one of the other reasons why we chose the Roy Pal product, this was probably in the top 10 batteries that we got to, they were all the same. They're an IP67 case. So what IP67 means is that you can submerge the battery to 1 meter for 30 minutes. Conversely, it's very difficult for gas to escape that battery as well. So you're creating um effectively an enclosed environment when you build it that way. And if you can prevent that burst from failing on the back where the vent is, then it's very easy to not introduce oxygen into the space and just manage what it might produce if one of the internal cells fails.

[00:07:29]>> That's kind of one of the unique features of an IP67 enclosure, right? It becomes >> inside protection as well as protection from the outside. airtight.

[00:07:38]>> IP20 batteries, of which there are many, um, have absolutely nothing but a grill pre preventing air from getting in and out. So, it doesn't. So, once they start to fail, they are exposed to an oxygen environment and that oxygen is going to be happy feeding that going all day long and make it worse and worse and worse.

[00:07:55]>> True. Okay. So, we got to we got to find space for venting.

[00:08:00]>> Yeah. And because of the location, so I don't know if you guys understand this, but the intake valve for air on this vessel is this main chimney that sits right here. And what Blaine has on the outboard side are two exhaust vents. And we will be plumbing all of this. You know, potentially we'll put the vents through the exhaust side for the battery emergency because that takes the gas directly over. It's already blown away.

[00:08:25]>> No chance for it to be internal to the battery or to the boat itself. Um, another feature of iron phosphate, which is worth noting, even though I would say less of a consideration, but still important, is the gas that comes off an LFP uh vent is much less toxic than the gas that comes off of other chemistries.

[00:08:45]So, if you have a sulfur battery or if you have a nickel, maganganesees cobalt battery or if you have a um a sodium battery, you they all produce a much more dangerous gas when they are there. And you do get, you know, let's say for one uh one of our 75 amp cells, we get 200 L of gas.

[00:09:04]>> Yeah.

[00:09:05]>> So, if it's less toxic, it gives you a chance to get to a breather and put that on and get off the boat safely. And everything that we do on design is about not necessarily about prevention because things happen. You do everything you can to prevent, but once something occurs, everything about getting you off the boat safely, >> mitigation, and yeah, safety. Excellent.

[00:09:26]Now, what else are we going to have other than the batteries in here?

[00:09:30]Because obviously we've got to have I know some of the main ones, generators, we'll have to have uh e- motors we'll have to have. Uh what else are we going to have crammed in here like um cooling systems I guess we're going to need something for that.

[00:09:43]>> There's going to be a chiller system that might live back here, might live up here. There are going to be the charging systems associated with each one of the generators, the converters effectively, okay, to give us the battery voltage that we need. Um, there's going to be the motor controllers on the motors themselves.

[00:10:02]>> Um, and those are fair size. Like the motor controllers in this case are about half the size of your Miller welding.

[00:10:08]>> Okay.

[00:10:09]>> Um, and then they're simply going to be and those usually come in what we just call boxes. So, uh, think of an electrical box like you see on the side of a building or something like that that contains a bunch of stuff.

[00:10:19]>> Instead of it being a box that's 90% air and 10% stuff, our boxes tend to be about 75% stuff and 20% 25% air.

[00:10:28]>> Okay.

[00:10:28]>> Um, and we will locate those because the generators don't take up too much height in this back room. We have a lot of vertical wall here.

[00:10:35]>> Absolutely.

[00:10:36]>> We have a lot of ceiling space here. We have the back of the battery wall all the way across except for the door. And then, you know, we want to try and keep all the power electronics back here. So, one of the next really important stages here is Blaine's going to get the aluminum work finished so that we can build actual mock-ups of the battery bank until they arrive. And those will be physically in place until we're finished. We have to skin the walls now and the and get the finished surfaces up. And then every piece of power electronics, every wire conduit, every piece of plumbing is going to be mapped out and in case of any actual hardware built again in solid door skin structure. So we can start playing with where does it go? How do we route the cables? How do we route the plumbing? Um what are the constraints? Where are we going to put this ventilation system?

[00:11:27]How are we going to manage the the the airspace ventilation system? And the key thing is you always start with your biggest components, get them to where they make the most amount of practical sense, and then start filling in all your smaller stuff around them. We have the top half of the back wall. We have both verticals on the side. We have the back of the battery wall here. So, we have a lot of surface area, let alone we can tap into the roof if we need to for things as well. Um, but at the same time, the first focus is get all of that equipment and machinery in the generator space so that we are not taking away anything from this service room that these guys need up here.

[00:12:08]>> More door skin. We've already templated this before, Brent. Why are we doing it again?

[00:12:14]>> Well, because boat builders love door skin. We're trying to keep the industry alive. But no, in truth, what we did before, if everyone remembers, see, we were framing. So, we took strips of door skin, we made the shape of the generators, we made the shape of the batteries, and they gave everybody a 3D context of what we're doing. Now that we've committed to product, we have to commit to space. And now that we've committed to space, we have to commit to routing and planning. So, we go into what I call stage two door skinning.

[00:12:50]No, >> you know, I'm rolling my eyes huge here.

[00:12:56]>> It'll all make sense in the long run.

[00:12:58]The again, the key for this is that once we've you always want to think twice and drill once. That's I think that's the saying or there's some version of that.

[00:13:06]>> Measure twice, cut once.

[00:13:07]>> Measure twice, cut once. Door skinning is your measuring twice routine because there's no cost to change. Cut once means you've cut once. And when you see how beautiful the wall material is going into here, how different this is going to look that from it's going to look like a hospital surgery when we get the walls up. The last thing you want to be is the guy who puts the screw in the wrong place.

[00:13:31]>> Yeah. Now, another question is is why can't we just stick the batteries wherever they fit? I mean, we've had guys comment uh lay them out all under the floor or work them up the walls of the engine room or or wherever. Why are we putting them in the way that we're putting them in?

[00:13:47]>> Um, first and foremost, temperature management. So, even though we're going with the liquid cooled platform, which should make temperature of the cells and and and longevity a no-brainer in this case, the you want to ultimately keep the batteries out of the machinery space directly so you're not constantly fighting higher ambient temperature. The second thing is for everyone who's familiar with this boat, the the engines ran back here, right? So all the main weight of the vessel has always been sort of from this point backwards. And by having the generators at the back of this wall and the batteries at the front end of this room, we've really not changed the weight balance of the boat at all. And by having the battery banks outside with the door in the center and the three generators in parallel next to each other in the middle line of the boat, we've done everything we can to maintain the integrity of the balance point of the vessel without having to re-engineer and redesign everything. And the other part is one of the things we're all not thinking about right now is that once the batteries are in, you don't want to use them. You don't want to service them. You don't want to manage them. You don't want to play with them. You want to let them do their job.

[00:15:01]But up here, this is where all the action happens on the boat. You're going to have tool benches. You're going to have parts and pieces. Blaine has the capacity to fabricate, design, engineer, and build just about anything. But if he doesn't have the room to do it, it becomes really difficult. This room right now is gives him a tremendous amount of flexibility in operating this vessel.

[00:15:24]And for all of us who own a boat who've got tool benches stored on top of things with vices mounted on things we have to remove and clamp into place, this is where the living of this boat is going to make such a big difference. And having the batteries back here, the generators back there, it gives them the most amount of freedom they can have.

[00:15:43]>> So, what happens when we're halfway to Japan in the middle of the ocean? What if we have a problem? How are we designing this system to combat issues offshore or at the very least how to handle those issues if we have them?

[00:15:58]>> The key word there is redundancy. So the batteries in this case are two completely separate banks. So you have two 200 kowatth banks instead of one 400 kwatth bank. So if one battery in any of the racking fails, we can isolate that bank, potentially repair that battery depending upon whether it's a module replacement or a cell replacement and then push it back in place and get it up and going again. But this vessel was designed to operate with a 200 kWh battery bank. So that extra 200 kwatt hour we have is effectively its own form of redundancy and an extra battery. And then on the drive systems, which is equally important if the batteries completely fail. So if all the batteries can't be used for whatever reason, the the PTO system on the generators is going to allow us to still continually drive the vessel and get to where we have to go to manage or repair and replace. Those things give us a lot of flexibility on it. We're looking right now at some grid options on that to be able to tie all three generators into supplying power to the two electric motors in order to add a third layer of redundancy on top of all of that if you wish. But the in some cases people asked us the other day, would you carry a spare module? And and that is a great question and it is not a silly thought at all. So in this case having a spare module when you guys are going to do long offshore passages if you really wanted to um improve your risk opportunity that is a it's it's worth consideration. The challenge is you have to maintain the voltage of that module with the voltage of your battery bank.

[00:17:41]So it does require uh some extra charging capacity and measurement and management of that and you really want to keep all the batteries at the same temperature ambient wise all the time.

[00:17:53]Right? So it may be the right answer for the test or maybe having the 200 kowatth battery is enough risk management depending upon the durability of the trip. If you're going to be offshore for 3 weeks, if they chose to make a run from Victoria to Tahiti, um, you know, that would might change the way I would spare the vessel in terms of parts and pieces for Blaine to be able to do this.

[00:18:16]But the having basically two batteries and three generators as your alternative power supply for the drives gives you a pretty good level of redundancy compared to having just one main engine to each propeller.

[00:18:30]How big is 409 kilwatt hours of battery?

[00:18:34]>> Um, okay.

[00:18:45]>> Is it a little higher?

[00:18:46]>> Yeah, >> that's about 409 kilwatt hours time.

[00:18:51]>> No, that's two 200.

[00:18:54]>> That's 200. We're 200 right now.

[00:18:58]So big.

[00:18:59]>> Yes. Yes. It's not insubstantial.

[00:19:02]Roughly 2.8 tons.

[00:19:05]>> Yeah.

[00:19:06]>> Yeah. It's it's it's a lot. I would say that this battery bank is probably the size of two and a half super Snap-on toolboxes. So probably twice as deep as a Snap-On toolbox and maybe one and a half tall. And I'm talking about the bottom cab, not both cabs.

[00:19:28]Maybe the size of both the cabs high.

[00:19:30]>> So, think of it that you'd have both metric and imperial wrenches.

[00:19:34]>> That's right. Yeah. But heavier. Now, if someone's looking to do a fairly substantial electrical, lithium project, whatever it might be, at what point would you recommend a professional get involved in this?

[00:19:49]Well, if we look at it kind of as stages and you think that stage one would be replacing your lead acid or your AGM house bank with a lithium bank, you want to I would say it's worthwhile consulting with somebody who knows what they're doing. And there's a lot of very good professionals in the marine industry who have the knowledge. And it's again, it's not about the battery, it's about the ventilation, it's about the firefighting, it's the cooling, it's the integral elements that you have to bring in, then tying it to the power electronics. But companies like Victron have done a great job building pretty inexpensive control software for those kind of systems. When you move up to I want to have more power than I need and turn on everything that I want. So let's say a substantial house bank, that's probably the time when you want to start thinking about getting people who are professional designers involved just because of the power and the uh risk that you're bringing onto the vessel.

[00:20:49]And you do need to engage with somebody in terms of professional firefighting and ventilation. Um then when we move up into propulsion systems um where we're having both hotel and propulsion systems, it's probably worth the time for someone to invest in just purely engaging company like OIA for the design so that they can do a true cost evaluation of how they're going to use the boat and what does that mean in terms of overall budget and impact to how the vessel is going to operate because you can stage it where you're paying for a design which is a not a It's still a pretty significant investment to be fair, but it's not spending several hundred,000 on a large scale system like this. And then you can measure the risk of do I want this or do I want how much do I want this against the total cost of the project. Then you do want to work like one of the advantages that we bring to the table is we have so many hundreds of boats of practical experience at the type approval commercial level. So we can understand how to manage those scars and road rash potentials for your installation and present you with a pretty good risk matrix that you can base a decision whether you should or shouldn't go ahead with. Uh but then once you're there, you want to engage with people who know what they're doing on the installation. For sure. Yeah.

[00:22:08]Nothing replaces the been there, done that of people who've been doing it for decades. Now, you guys don't see everything on YouTube, but we have spent a large amount of time uh sitting down with Brent, figuring out this project and designing it. And um a good question is is why do we take so long to design this and and sit down and figure this all out?

[00:22:31]That's a great question. So, the concept is pretty simple. we can crank out a single line diagram vision of what this can look like within a day or so and give you an idea. The the practical element is the supply chain level of the industry is still pretty immature. There aren't a lot of companies that produce to our DNA. Uh when I talk about DNA, this is where the rubber hits the road for us. So if you go online you can buy electric motors and any battery cells and BMS's and blah blah blah infinitum and you could do it pretty cheaply frankly um and theoretically speaking that should all come together and deliver something that's going to work for you and and satisfy your concerns.

[00:23:19]What we've always found is that it's the quality of the supply chain that makes or breaks a project. And by that I mean I am 100% committed to the uptime of the operation of this boat as Brent Perry at OSIA. The we spend a huge amount of time curating suppliers and find out do they share that passion?

[00:23:42]Do they share that commitment? Are they willing to tangibly support that with a contract on the vessel that says that they'll be there to support all the engineering, all the service, be there for 10 years without limitation, without caveat, and at 100% replacement level.

[00:24:01]Because if you look at what Blaine and Janice are doing, they are bleeding edge pioneers in this space. This is one of the first vessels of this size being converted on this scale in the world.

[00:24:13]Not in British Columbia, in the world.

[00:24:16]They're taking a massive amount of risk by using this as the platform that they're going to both live aboard but also travel around the world on. So what we do is incorporate a supply chain that respects that risk that it that will is willing to support and be there for that risk. We want to share that risk. And the challenge you face in the industry today is you can look online, you can go to a trade show, you can there's a thousand ways to access parts. John down at the bar can tell you that so and so builds a good good part. But are those companies going to be there for you in 9 years, in 10 years? Are they going to answer the phone? That is where the difference really is. Now, after we've been through all of this and we have seen exactly what it takes to make this happen. Um, you know, when we first started, I thought that getting the parts and installing them was going to be the hard part. It's not. uh the amount of time and the effort that it takes to make sure you're getting the right parts and make sure you're engineering the product to actually do what you want it to do. That's where it's tough and that's really where I did not have the experience and it's nice to have somebody who does.

[00:25:32]>> Thanks for watching everyone. I know it was a lot of talking, but we really wanted to explain to you what's been happening in the background that you guys don't see. It takes a lot of planning to put together this hybrid electric conversion. Now things are going to get real. Things are going to start moving really fast and we really want to thank all of these people who have helped make operation silent running happen and they all joined through our website on board to tongrowa.com. As for watching some more videos, check out this one where we actually announce what battery we're going with and also don't forget to check out our whole playlist about operation silent running which is right here. We'll see you guys next Thursday.