Stats for May 2022

This has been an interesting month because we have spent the past 4 weeks cruising the Thames going both up-stream and down-stream. 

The boat is more efficient on a river because of the greater depth and width of water, so we use less power and go faster.

An added bonus on the Thames is that there are moorings with charging points. So we’ve been able to charge from shore power, topped up each day from our solar panels, so have not used our on board generator all month.

We charged the battery at St. Johns lock ( Lechlade) at their electric charging point and then went for three weeks before charging again at Sandford lock (south of Oxford). We could have gone another 4 or 5 days before charging, but we had heard that the moorings at Goring lock were closed for resurfacing work, so we charged when we could.

Stats
Distance travelled – 73 miles
Hours cruising – 35 hours 12 minutes
Electricity used for propulsion – 40.46 KWhrs
Electricity from Solar panels – 150.97 KWhrs
Electricity used for cooking etc. 187.12 KWhrs

This means for May our average electricity used for propulsion was
0.55 KWhrs per mile
1.14 KWs per hour

We are often asked how far we can travel on one charge – over 3 weeks in May we travelled for 35 hours, covering 73 miles and did all our cooking from a single charge topped up daily from our solar panels.

Cuter than batteries and solar panels

Stats for April 2022

In March 2022 I finally wired the new solar panels on our electic narrowboat, increasing the capacity of our solar panel array from 1KW to 1.5KW. 

I also improved the electronics that monitors the power we get from our solar panels and the power in and out of our battery. 

I was interested to see how much of the electricity we use for propulsion came from our solar panels. It is nice to see that even in April we got 2.5 times the power we used for propulsion, and 56% of our total electricity from our solar panels.

Electricity usage
• Propulsion – 47 KWhrs (22.5%)
• Domestic – 162 KWhrs (77.5%)
• Total – 209 KWhrs

Sources of electricity
• Solar panels – 117.5 KWhrs (56%)
• Genset – 63 KWhrs (30%) (2 hrs per week)
• Battery – 28.5 KWhrs (14%)

Cruising Stats
67miles traveled #
40:40 hours crusing time #
0.71 KWhrs per mile cruised
1.17 KWhrs per hour cruised
# Note: this includes cruising upstream on the Thames for 24 miles.

I try to collate these figures every month but as experience proved from last year sharing them is not my forte.

Battery Maintenance – March 2022

I don’t often get the opportunity to do a full maintenance check on our batteries, but with Cheryl planning to be off the boat for 10 days in March, I wouldn’t be cruising, or baking cakes for that matter, so an ideal time to do it.

To do this I needed to run the batteries down to being practically empty.

The last time I did this was over three years ago so I was interested to see :

  1. how much out of balance they were,
  2. whether any capacity had been lost.

The simple answer to both questions is :- not enough to care about.

The result showed such a miniscule out of balance reading of 0.09% that I didn’t need to take any action at all.  However, as I had got the battery to this state, I took the opportunity to add 1Ahr to the two lowest cells and 0.5Ahr to one other cell to restore the battery balance.

I used some software on my PC to show the voltage of each cell in the battery to aid me balance them.

Screen capture showing the cell voltage of each cell in our battery
LiFePO4 Cell Monitoring Software

I measured the capacity of the battery as I recharged them to full and found no measurable drop in capacity after 5 years of continuous daily use, which is very reassuring.

With Firecrest’s battery being out of balance by just 0.09% I can safely ignore the often-repeated myth that LiFePO4 batteries need re-balancing on every cycle.

There are two take-away points from this:

  1. Firecrest’s LiFePO4 battries do not appear to have deteriated at all in over 5 years of daily use.
  2. Re-balancing of our LiFePO4 battery does not need to be done often, even after 3 years it was not necessary.

Cruising Statisitics for June for Narrowboat Firecrest

Cruising stats

  • 51:24 hours cruising
  • 77.2 miles covered
  • 18 days cruising, 12 days moored
  • 39 locks
  • 5 Tunnels including Harcastle, Froghall and Leek tunnels

Power required for electric propulsion

  • 1,017 watt hours per hour cruised
  • 677 watt hours per mile cruised

(Real world figures for the electric propulsion on Firecrest over the month of June)

Electricity usage

  • Propulsion 52kWhrs (25%)
  • Domestic 160kWhrs (75%)
  • Total 212kWhrs

Sources of electricity

  • Solar Panels 93kWhrs (44%) (nearly twice what we used for our electric propulsion)
  • Genset 119kWhrs (56%)
  • Genset run hours 16

Note: Cruising time is based on time from unmooring to starting to moor up.  It excludes stops for water and fuel, but includes waiting for locks and sitting in locks waiting for them to fill or empty.

The Future

We have had two new solar panels delivered to Firecrest. One is now fitted to the roof, but neither are yet connected so are not yet adding to our solar power.

Solar Panelbeing fitted to Narrowboat Firecrest
Work in progress

As I write this it is now 12 days since we ran our generator and our batteries are still at 60% so there is no need for us to run it again for a few more days. – Brillient.

Cruising Statistics for May 2021

May is the first full month since we increased our Solar Panel capacity from 640W to 1kW.

May has not been a good month for Solar power but we still got more than twice the power we used for propulsion from the sun.  It is noticeable how much less we need to run the generator to keep our batteries charged.

It is now quite practical for us to cruise and live on our boat for a whole week without running the generator.  Since we cook with an electric oven, electric hob and use an electric kettle, that is impressive.

Don’t tell Cheryl but I now have a cunning plan to add two more panels bringing our capacity up to 1.5kW so that a greater proportion of our total electricity usage comes from the sun and we can run out generator even less. 

Cruising stats

  • 35:41 hours cruising
  • 56 miles covered
  • 39 locks
  • 13 days cruising, 18 days moored
  • Genset use 19hrs
  • Rain – too much ! !

Electricity usage

  • Total 238kWhrs
  • Propulsion 40kWhrs (17%)
  • Domestic 197kWhrs (83%)

Sources of electricity

  • Solar Panels 89kWhrs (38%) (over twice what we used for propulsion)
  • Genset 148kWhrs (62%)

Power required for propulsion

  • 1,138 watts per hour cruised
  • 725 watts per mile cruised

Note: Cruising time is based on time from unmooring to starting to moor up. It excludes stops for water and fuel, but includes waiting for locks and sitting in locks waiting for them to fill or empty.

Some Solar Stats


After a lot of procrastination I finally wired in the solar panel we fixed in place last summer.

The final solar panel in place

It takes our panel capacity from 640Watts to 1kW. I’m pleased to see the difference it makes, so have some figures to share.

Solar panels supplied by photonic universe


With the easing of lockdown and the better weather, we are now cruising in a more normal pattern for us, which admittedly is slowly. I’ve been very encouraged by the results we have seen. So far the panels are providing a lot more power than we use for propulsion and over all 51% of all the electricity we have used in the past two weeks, and when you consider we cook electric I think that is pretty impressive.
These are the figures for the past 2 weeks, mid April, weather predominantly sunny with some light cloud.
Cruising stats
• 13:47 hours cruising
• 21.9 miles covered
• 6 days cruising, 8 days moored.
Electricity usage over past 2 week
• Total 92 kW hrs
• Propulsion 12kW hrs (14%)
• Domestic 79 kW hrs (86%)
Sources of electricity over past 2 weeks
• Solar 47 kWhrs (51%)
• Gen set 38 kWhrs (42%)
• Battery 7 kWhrs (7%)
(note – the 7kWhrs of power that came from the batteries means the batteries had less charge in them at the end of the two weeks then they did at the start by 7kWhrs, which is 13% of our battery capacity.)
Power required for propulsion
• Per hour cruised – 945 watts
• Per mile of cruising – 594 watts
• While passing moored boats about 600 watts
• At average canal cruising speed (2.5-3mph) 1.7-1.8 kW

Only once in the past 14 days did we use more power for propulsion than we generated that particular day from the solar panels. That was the day we cruised for 4.5 hours downstream on the River Soar and then upstream on the River Trent. Although the boat travels faster and is more efficient on rivers, it still requires more power than on a canal. But even so, we still generated 89% of the propulsion power through the solar panels, so only 11% came from our batteries.

Power sources

Based on the past 4.5 years records, we only cruise on average once every 2.4 days. So taking into consideration our non-cruising days alongside our cruising days, the solar panels will provide far more power than we need for propulsion. In the past two weeks it has been 3.5 times as much, or 363% which means that even if we doubled the amount of cruising we do, the solar panels will still provide more power than we need for propulsion.

It is also interesting to see how much the power gained is increasing week by week. Two weeks ago the peak power was just 11.5 Amps now, at the end of April, it is over 15 Amps. I expect those figures to continue improving throughout May and June.

For other boaters reading this, you might be horrified at how much electricity we use for domestic purposes. To be fair, we are a gasless boat. We cook electric, use a 240v fridge, an electric kettle and toaster, and the washing machine heats from a cold fill. We run a diesel boiler for heating and hot water. Not to mention the other gadgets that keep us connected to the wider world.

Previous post about our solar set up https://nb-firecrest.co.uk/taking-advantage-of-the-sunshine/

Can I also take this opportunity to apologise that our contact and comments options are still disabled.

Where the power goes – Part 1

We have travelled more miles in March than January and February combined – hardly surprising, Cheryl has been taking the helm a bit more.  Actually this has allowed me the chance to take some speed/power readings to gauge the performance of the propulsion motor on long straight stretches of the Grand Union canal.

I am pleased how little power the boat needs to cruise, less than I estimated when I was designing it and selecting the motor, batteries etc.  One thing that is obvious to me as I cruise is just how much more power it takes to cruise faster.

I can see second by second exactly how much power the motor is using, how much power it is pulling from the batteries.  It is really obvious just what a waste of power it is to try to go fast.  A good thing, because going slowly does less damage to the canal banks, and we have more time to enjoy the wildlife as we pass.

KW vs MPH for canal cruising

Cruising at 3mph feels nice.  3.5mph is really as fast as one should travel on most canals but it uses more than twice the power of 3 mph, so seems hardly worth it. The moral here is just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

When we pass moored boats we slow down and our power drops to under 1 KW.  When we travel through locks we use almost no power because the motor only uses power when turning the propeller.  The Stoke Bruerne 7 locks used just 14.8Ahrs.

For people who prefer figures here is the data as a table.  I have included Amps, because most narrow boaters think about battery power in terms of Amps.

1 step forward and 3 steps back

I have been running my own business since 2002, and each time I upgrade my computer I keep the old one mothballed to support old projects.  Cheryl would never have allowed me to bring all these old PCs onto the boat, but one of my customers now wants a significant update on a circa 1998 product.  Well you can guess what’s coming next.

The snag being, one of the tools I use runs on Windows XP and I only have Windows 10 – 64bit on the boat.

The more frustrating thing is I had the ideal PC which could quickly load Windows 2000, Windows XP and the customer’s software.  In the effort to downsize ready for the boat I gave it to charity (tools with a mission-TWAM)  having not even turned it on for 6 years.  It would have been perfect for what I need – C’est la vie.

Since I use Windows 10 Professional, I can run virtual PCs with other operating systems without interfering with my normal desktop.  Something I have never done but Google came to the rescue finding me some instructions on how to enable it, and how to find a Windows XP virtual machine to load. It turns out Microsoft has recently removed their downloadable copies of a Windows XP virtual PC from the usual page, I guess in an attempt to stop people using XP, but luckily they have it hidden away in another location so I down loaded it anyway.  At home I would have downloaded the Windows 8, Vista, and Windows 10 in 32 and 64 bit versions while I was at it, but as we have to use 4G I have to not waste our download limits.

Still with me?

Got all that done – I have Windows XP running on a virtual PC in a window on my desktop and can load software as if it was a standalone XP PC – brilliant.

Well not quite.  The virtual PC does not support USB, which was the whole point in the first place.  Still, I found another interesting article on how to use USB devices with your virtual PC and what’s more, gives the advantage of full screen use – brilliant.  Well no.  Unfortunately, you can only use USB devices that will talk to your host operating system, which the device I want to use does not, which is the reason I started all this in the first place.

After a few days of research and playing around getting my Virtual Windows XP PC working – I am still back at square one.  So now I am going down the route of buying an old laptop with Windows XP professional on – just so I can use two old and obsolete USB devices.  The alternative is to go back to Suffolk and work from home for a few weeks, perhaps not, I don’t think Cheryl would let me do that either.

 

 

Boating with a difference, How to spot a Firecrest

Narrowboat design is evolving to take into account modern technologies.  We’ve tried to incorporate a lot of the benefits behind the facia of  Firecrest.  We’ve chosen to embrace the environment, making Firecrest, albeit a very beautiful one, a means to an end, our comfortable home from home that maximises our ability to explore and enjoy our surroundings.  We’re reading that more and more boaters are pushing the boundaries of how much you can fit into a long metal box.  We’re loving the interest shown in our boat, and likewise how interested we are in the more traditional.

Firecrest’s features aren’t unique, just not as traditional as a lot of modern boats.

What makes her unusual.

1) Instead of a diesel engine we have an electric motor for propulsion, giving us totally silent cruising.

2) We are a gasless boat, so don’t use bottles of LPG for cooking as is usual, instead we have an electric oven, an electric induction hob, use an electric kettle, and an electric toaster.  These are all powered from the batteries so we can use them any time day or night without running the generator and disturbing the neighbours.

3) With my background in electronics and computer control, we have a modern computerised CANbus wiring system so all our lights, water pumps etc., are powered and controlled by a system much the same as is in all modern cars, lorries, coaches, and many commercial boats.  This gives me a lot of flexibility how things work, greatly simplifies the wiring, and reduces the amount of wire needed too.

4) Instead of the normal deck at the bow that is above the canal water level, ours is below the water level, a dropped well deck, at the same level as the rest of the interior of the boat.   Instead of the canvas cover (a cratch cover) we have extended the steel roof over the bow deck to make it an indoor sitting area, with headroom to stand up, and overhead lighting.  We have cratch sides that can open up, or be removed completely allowing us to have fresh cool air, but also shelter from wind.

5) Since we don’t get “free” hot water every time the engine runs, we have a modern high efficiency diesel boiler for our central heating and hot water, more like the ones found in homes with oil heating than the typical boilers used on narrowboats.  This means we have hot water all the time, Cheryl can wash up as many dishes as she likes and take as long in the shower as she wants.

6) We’ve opted to have a waterless Eco toilet, (composting toilet.) which are becoming a more and more popular choice for boaters. One of the biggest benefits is because we don’t flush, we don’t have to fill up the water tank so often.  And no, it doesn’t smell.

7) Our battery charging system is also computerised, and nothing like the usual alternator run from the propulsion engine.  This I have had to write the software for.

8) Our batteries are LiFePO4 (a type of Lithium battery that is much safer than the ones used in phones and laptops).  These have very different characteristics to the usual leisure Lead Acid batteries making them ideal for our boat.  These are charged from an onboard GenSet or shore power when available.  These need electronics and software management which I have also designed and built myself.

Lots of people seem interested in our electric propulsion and how we charge our batteries so I will add some “techie” posts in the future to describe that in some detail, and how we find it works in practise.

For all of Firecrest’s individuality, she still requires polishing and painting to keep her looking good.

Battery Charging Day

Having had a cup of tea at 5:30 am because we woke early, come breakfast we had no 240V power – oh well no coffee.

Opps – we had run the batteries flat and the Inverter had powered down as it should.  I knew the batteries were low, but declined to run the generator the afternoon before because our neighbours were enjoying the sun and the peace fishing off the bow of their boat, and I thought we would do it today instead, and let them enjoy their afternoon.

We ran 3 cells out of 32 – 100% flat – opps not the best thing to do for longevity, but once in a while is OK with our batteries, but something I intend to ensure does not happen again.

It has given me the chance to check the state of all the cells, and assess the state of balance, and we now have a fully charged battery, and I have lots of measurements for each cell.

I am installing electronics that will monitor the batteries all the time, and will eventually start the genset automatically if they get too flat, but I have not installed that yet – ironically I was going to make a start today.  This will also keep an track of exactly how much power we have left.

Normally it is best to keep LiFePO4 batteries between 10% and 90% charged.  The normal practise of charging Lead Acid batteries to 100% and float charging them is a really bad thing to do to Lithium Batteries, so I have been very careful not to charge them too much.

Still it has been a nice day – and we have a nice view over the wide’s – with pairs of Geese being very territorial, and chasing the swan away.