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Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by jillesvangurp on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:27PM (#50471856)
It's quite fun to do the math on what it would take to power the largest container ships by batteries. It's not physically impossible but it would displace a good chunk of the usable cargo load.

A single container can contain up to 8mwh of capacity. Just 125 of those gets you to 1gwh. Depending on how quick the ship goes, you might need 1-2 gwh per day. You can conserve energy by going slower. But out of 14K containers, reserving maybe a third for battery could power a ship for quite some time. Enough to e.g. cross the Pacific. There are obvious issues with weight and balance. The volume is doable but the weight creates a lot of issues.

Another challenge is indeed the cost of these batteries. That's about an order of magnitude of where it needs to be to make it financially realistic. But batteries coming down further in cost could make this more feasible. And it's not like these huge container ships are cheap. A couple of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars worth of battery is reasonable. Billions would be unreasonable.

There are traditionally powered ships carrying many thousands of EVs with batteries already. So, putting a few gwh of battery on a ship is already happening; we're just not using them to move the ship. And batteries made in China are typically shipped to the US and elsewhere for integrating into cars, grid storage, etc. as well. If you can ship it, you might as well use it. And of course battery powered ships are already very popular for lighter short haul like ferries, tug boats, small transport barges on rivers, etc. There are plenty of them operational without major issues. Safety issues seem to be so far not a blocker.

The incentive here is not burning a millions of dollars worth of fuel per journey. Container ships use a lot of fuel. That adds up fairly rapidly to offsetting the cost of the battery. I think the question is not if batteries will be used on ships but how much batteries typical ships will have.

Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by wtch98 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:24PM (#50472786)
> A single container can contain up to 8mwh of capacity.

That's about 10 months of power for my home and car (gas heating). A 40' container on my drive or buried in the garden would power the house through the winter. It's crazy when you think how solvable season-shifting domestic power use is.

Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by idiotsecant on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:42PM (#50473062)
A lot of things are solvable if you don't care how much they cost
Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by wtch98 on Friday November 13, 2026 @04:01AM (#50480418)
a couple of years ago it was $2m to store the same energy in the same way.

Excluding the car and heating, it's $40k for battery to store enough power to run my house for a week. Including heating at a 3:1 ratio for a heat pump compared with gas on the coldest week of the last year and it's $80k. That's less than 20% of the cost of the house. Throw in $10k of solar (about 35kWp) and even this far north - on the coldest days it tends to be clear skies and that would generate enough to recharge the battery without even touching the grid. The 35kWp wouldn't fit on the roof, but certainly would fit in a nearby field for basically zero cost for the land.

Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by bobson381 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @03:17PM (#50473562)
It's also crazy to think about how energy efficient it is to shorten supply chains where possible.
Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by tenuousemphasis on Thursday November 12, 2026 @04:21PM (#50474462)
It'd be better to build more insulated and air tight homes (bonus if they're not single family - shared walls save on heating). Then it doesn't require so much energy to heat and cool.
Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by hommelix on Thursday November 12, 2026 @05:59PM (#50475631)
What about battery self-discharge over months?