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> With an EV ship that fuel cost increase would probably be negligible.

The batteries are still charged by fuel onshore. The cost increase would double, plus engine fatigue would increase. How is that negligible?

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Electricity is dirt cheap compared to the useful output you get from fuel, even before you consider buying it wholesale and at times when demand is otherwise low.

We should run electric third rail along the Mississippi. It’s already barges with tugs so a few electric tugboats mostly running during daylight hours, we could electrify most of this by just replacing a few tugboats. Make the lines high capacity enough to run along the coasts, and a fleet of tugs could be a huge dispatchable load, slow steaming could free up a lot, and going just a few kts faster would mop up a ton of what may be otherwise curtailed

Tugs could afford the weight of a bunch of even lead-acid batteries and go electric without the need for a huge amount of infrastructure going the entire length of the Mississippi.

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