electric room

WFH. The cash machine was empty again, so no trip to the market. More finishing projects at work and a number of meetings. I finished work early to go on a trip with the friends of the technical museum. We visited BEHALA (Berlin harbours and warehouses) at the Westhafen. We first had a talk about the Westhafen. Goods come on boat and rail and leave by lorry and cargo bike. Before corona they got an entire goods train for the big department store. Sadly people have switched to internet shopping.

First we got to admire the heavy goods shuttle which is used to ship the steam turbine built by Siemens Energy round the corner to the Westhafen where they are loaded on a river barge to be transported to Hamburg. The steam turbines are quite massive at 500t and cannot be transported via road. Apparently they ship one once a week. I need to see if I can figure out when that happens.  It was cool to see the container bridge whizz past and load a container on a waiter lorry.

BEHALA also do research. Next we got to see there autonomous vessels. They are working with local universities and DHL. The idea is to make use of the waterways around Berlin with smaller, more flexible boats. For positioning they use satellites together with cameras that track features along the shore and compare them with maps. Quite cools stuff.

Next we got to visit the pusher boat Elektra. Another bit of BEHALA research. It uses a battery/hydrogen hybrid energy system. The fuel cells are used to keep the batteries topped up while the batteries feed the engines. The boat pushes barges (sometimes a 60m together with a 30m) and is designed to be able to go to Hamburg. There are still issues with the hydrogen tanks. The problem is to build them small enough to fit on the boat. The big river barges going on the Rhine just take two standard containers loaded with hydrogen. Quite a jump in technology from last time I visited a boat.

BEHALA treated us to sandwiches, fruit and cakes. Afterwards we got to climb the tower of the former administrative building to enjoy the view.

It was a fantastic day out. I learned a lot of stuff and enjoyed new views of the city. More pictures on flickr.