Have electric motors + a generator ever been tried as power for an offshore?
 

Would a pair of these type of motors http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/1EBJ9 and a genny in between them work? I know the torque is insane and that is why locomotives are powered in this manor. Some of the 100 hp operate to 4500 rpm I see. What are the pros and cons?

http://dsehybrid.com/?gclid=CISJzpXTp5ICFRI0awod1CWyQQ :p

http://www.solarnavigator.net/fische...l_electric.htm :p

LOst somewhere
 

I remember a company down in Houston Texas think it was called Fast Electric. Forgot the contact info and their web page is expired feys.org :p

The problemos
 

Everything is HEAVYI Last year I worked on a Sweadship built 80' Sport Fisherman. It had two 1900 hp MTUs that were fed into a pair of Reintjes V-drives. The V-drives only had in & out clutches.
Forward & reverse was handled by variable pitch props. Now for the electric part. On the front of the V-drives were electric motors. When it came time for low speed trolling. They fired up two 40kw gensets shut down the main engines unclutched the V-drives and trolled at 8 knots on the electric motors. I got the job of ripping it all out and reworking everything to work without the electric drive.
The motors were about 20 inches in diameter and 2 feet long. My mini chain tackle that can lift a could lift a Chevy Big Block inboard with ease couldn't lift those electric motors. :p

The motor that yu show in #1 is synchronous. It always runs 3550 rpms. Hold on when you switch it on.........

I have a buddy who is the prez of FL Electric vehicle club...build an electric motorcycle and an electric car and an electric dragster. The torque on these things is unreal! The dragster beats gas powered dragsters and makes no noise.

I had him look at using my 6.5KW genny to charge batteries and drive a trolling-style motor....kind of a very cheap get home or cross the stream slowly and cheaply mechanism....the math didnt work out. You'd need 5000 lbs of batteries and 12 hr per day solar plus the genny to make it work...limiting factor is still battery/cells.

Pretty much all the heavy equipment offshore including the tugs are electric. They will have anything up to and including a electric motive diesel from a train for power and electric motors on the props, this allows them to dynamically position the boats using satellite instead of anchoring.

Last vessel I worked offshore on had five train engines for power, awesome sound when they took on a big load.

It is not an efficient system but provides incremental control.

I believe the very large offroad dump trucks use the same system also.

Submarines, trains, ferryboats, etc. All Diesel electric by ALCO, American Locomotive Co. When I was in the Army in NYC, we had two Alco ferryboats that had 180' long shafts, props and rudders on both ends. Cool setup.

Batteries are the weak link, but as electric cars improve the technology, electric boats will become more interesting. At one extreme you have small tunnel boats running 70 mph sending 144V to a 24V motor. Fun lasts for a few minutes with 24 @ 6V lead acid batteries weighing 1500 lbs. At the other extreme you have catamaran cruisers that can go 6 mph on solar power without using the batteries. In between there are at least two runabouts that promise water skiing; for how long I don't know.

Lithium ion chemistry and nanotechnology promise 10X the power density, but on the market today you get 2X the power at 10X the price. Commercially available solar panels are 10-12% efficient, new technology in the lab at 40+%. it is an interesting area to watch.