FUD Electric farm tractors and combines (2023 Update)

[Notice the other row of chargers just off the right edge of the photo! The vent hoods -- hydrogen gas -- are a dead giveaway.]

Note the absence of any forklifts in the area. You don't really think they pulled the batteries out and then PUSHED the battery-less trucks over to some other area for storage while their batteries were being charged?

Note that a big, heavy battery is A Good Thing for a forklift as it serves as a ballast to offset the weight of the load. So, replacing lead acid batteries with lithium is perilous as it alters the certification of the truck -- less load and less lift (even though there's just as much power available!)

A battery-powered electric combine would likely prefer a lighter/higher energy density store.

[snip]

If you price the batteries required to do this it becomes prohibitive very quickly. Even the passive bulk fuel stores are non-trivial costs.

I'm doing the sums at the moment to have storage batteries for my home and they work out at about £600 /kWhr on the scale I want.

Anyone needing continuous power medical equipment to stay alive does and there are mechanisms which I don't fully understand to get vulnerable users supplied by small petrol or diesel units before their UPS runs out. One failing of the rollout of VOIP and full fibre in our area is that the POTS based Care on Call systems are dead in the water during a powercut and it seems the Telcos didn't think it would be a problem!

As far as electricity and to some extent internet is concerned we are pretty close to being a third world country (but without the resilience that would normally imply). I expect a long cold dark winter since we have next to no gas storage and rely on gas for 60% of our electricity!

The new as from today PM has said "energy will not be rationed".

You could manhandle the batteries in and out but it is yet another damn thing to go wrong and more downtime during harvest. Battery sets at that capacity will be enormously expensive. However you do it you have to have enough stored energy to do the required large task or be able to get it and quickly. The time window when the crop is ripe is narrow.

UK infrastructure is pretty screwed and generating capacity is completely screwed so yes it is going to get interesting this winter.

Modern combines are already fairly automated and on GPS tracking yield with field coordinates etc. It is possible that smaller units will become favoured but right now they have the biggest brute they can fit in. UK fields are much smaller than US ones. Near me which is mixed farming rather than grain belt fields are about 500m x 500m.

They don't. They run a second tractor unit parallel and dump the grain into that. The combine only uses its internal grain tank when they are swapping bulk grain handling trailers over. The combine keeps running pretty much relentlessly whilst the weather holds good. They start about

5am once the nights dew has burned off and stop only when it starts to condense again sometimes as late as midnight continuing under lights.

The big snag is that everybody and their dog wants the same kit running flat out at exactly the same time. Breakdowns are a nightmare.

Fuel cells are the joke that just keeps on giving. They are in principle the best thing since sliced bread but the catalyst gets poisoned so easily that in practice they invariably under perform.

Don't get me wrong here I am generally in favour of sensible approaches to green energy and was at a major UK event in London's Trafalgar Square with kit on show using fuel cells that could in principle power an entire major telephone exchange.

However, the only fuel cells actually working were educational toys powering a solitary LED and the whole exhibition itself was powered by noisy smelly diesel electric generators! That says a lot!!!

They do move around but they cause total chaos on even larger roads. The lead vehicle says combine escort and tows the blade and then the combine lumbers along behind at a stately speed occupying the full width of our small rural road. If you meet one you have no alternative but to back up the previous field gateway.

I can't see combine harvesters being replaced any time soon. They are insanely expensive pieces of kit and get worked into the ground.

Is it *cheaper* if you price the environmental costs of continuing to use fossil fuels?

Note that chemical batteries aren't the only way to store energy. E.g., here, we have cubic miles of water behind dams storing energy for use when it is convenient.

POTS, here, runs off battery -- with backup *jet* powered gensets to keep the exchanges alive in the event the mains go away.

If you move everything onto *glass*, then you're screwed. Ditto cellular.

I thought stockpiling gas stores was ongoing in light of Russia's hissy fits?

One can *say* anything one wants. The reality may be different! We certainly don't believe that "water will not be rationed", here! Folks who plan on having as much as they want will likely be unpleasantly surprised.

The battery can accompany the combine in a tender, tethered to the "load".

Necessity, mother, invention...

But it's like XMAS -- you KNOW it is coming and know roughly *when*. I.e., planning can offset risk.

But this (presumably) is a transitional state. Eventually, The Adults will be forced to step up and make the tough decisions.

But combines evolved into behemoths because bigger was considered an efficiency hack. Once the relative weights of the individual design decisions are rejiggered, a different solution will likely emerge.

Here, homes had *no* insulation in the walls at the start of the 20th century. A certain amount of "draft" was to be expected; light a fire if you want to feel cozy; burn CHEAP heating oil to deal with the larger thermal mass.

Suddenly, heating costs (and comfort) rose on the relative scale of design criteria and the solution space changed.

We removed our lawn ~30 years ago as it was evident that watering it was a silly waste of water in a place where water is scarce. Prior to that, homes were developed "in town" *with* lawns as the concern wasn't as dire. Yet, we don't have "non-grass" (bare dirt) as that would be a lousy solution to the "yard without need of water" problem.

We have a 12% (electricity) tariff increase in the works (they ALWAYS get approved so hoping it won't is silly!). So, we'll start more aggressively looking at how much power we waste, around here... maybe turn off a few computers or move the big freezer into "living space" instead of the hot garage, etc.

Criteria change so solutions change.

Yes. So, put the battery in THAT unit. When full, it can be replaced by an "empty one" -- with a fresh battery!

Then there's obviously a *need* that isn't being addressed. The question is whether or not the pols will rise to the occasion... or punt it to the next guy (until it can't be punted any farther)

Neighbor switched to an all electric kitchen. And, upgraded his electric service accordingly. There are consequences to decisions.

So, it's a technology that needs refining. ICEs were conceptually wonderful creations -- as long as you ignored all the environmental consequences of their use. Technology has tried to mitigate some of that (pollution) but can't mitigate all of it (CO2). Eventually, you realize a different solution is required.

It says that no one thought to make an investment in the technology as there doesn't seem to be anyone clawing at a solution that could avail itself of them. We'll find some way of kicking the climate can down the road cuz

*we* don't want to "pay a price".

Until someone imposes a solution on us.

Because they are oversized behemoths. I grew up in farm country with 20 ft wide roadways (for bidirectional traffic). If the school bus happened to get "stuck" behind a farmer driving his tractor down the roadway, we were late to school. <shrug> Fact of life. If there was a demand to avoid this inconvenience, then monies would have been spent to widen that roadway. Or, the bus route would have been diverted to a roadway that was less likely to encounter THAT farmer.

Ah, but the quoted email suggested they would be replaced next year (ahead of their "three year replacement interval").

See the folly?

Probably - at least if you live 50' above sea level.

There is some pumped storage in the UK but nowhere near enough to make any kind of dent. It is good for smoothing out the peak demand though - it can come online very quickly.

Not quite. There are fewer bigger exchanges each needing a lot less power than the old prehistoric POTS lines did to drive them. My local phone exchange is 5 miles away. My full fibre runs back to the nearest county town 15 miles away so only 10% as many exchanges needed.

It is in mainland Europe where they actually *have* decent gas storage facilities. Ours are all brim full (what little of it there is). Even Spain (which is a fairly warm Mediterranean country) has more!

UK is presently exporting our gas to Europe to help fill up their copious storage tanks. The UK closed down its biggest remaining gas storage facility Rough in 2017 (to cut down overheads). They are presently scrambling to get it back online and if we are lucky it might just be ready to accept gas by Xmas by which time to spot market price for gas in mid-winter will be truly stratospheric.

UK all up has about 10 days of gas storage capacity between us and rolling power cuts when the shit hits the fan. It depends a lot on whether the EU players will sell us some of their gas back at usurious prices or they need it all just to keep their own lights on.

Most European countries have about 60-80 days gas storage capacity that is presently around 80% or so full according to recent reports.

We have a new form of Tinkerbellism in the latest PM. She thinks that if you wish for something hard enough it will always come true. So far she has been proved right - since she *is* now the new PM.

It will likely be a white knuckle ride in the UK this winter.

I wouldn't like to bet on that :(

They still don't in a lot of the UK. My own Victorian era house is extremely difficult make energy efficient with solid brick and stone walls (though parts are 3' thick). It is slow to warm up in summer and correspondingly has a lot of thermal inertia in the core in winter.

Compared to a modern build with high quality insulation between a double skin wall it is rubbish though. On the plus side mine was previously unsympathetically extended before it could be listed. Most of the rest of the village are stuck with a grade 2 or 2* listing which means almost any kind of modification that wasn't possible in 1910 is verboten!

Heating oil is the worst of all possible worlds here now. Its price isn't capped at all and suppliers can price gouge for supplying it. Ironically just after the first lockdown they were begging people to take it off their hands when there were no planes flying.

The people on the worst deal in the UK right now are the ones who previously had the best greenest local combined heat and power generation systems built into their buildings. Co-generation of electricity and hot water. Snag is the supplier is treated as a business and so is on the uncapped business gas rate which is massively higher than the domestic price capped tariff (in part to cross subsidise).

Here the price cap is (was?) about to go up by 80% at the end of this month. But it is possible the new PM will change all that.

I suspect that is how it will play out. Particularly now when energy prices are sky high and the pips are really squeaking.

That seems most unlikely to me. Farmers only replace stuff when it quite literally falls apart. Vintage tractors are a thing around here too.

The company I worked for at the time was a distributor for Trabon lubrication systems. I had little to do with that end of the business but I tagged along with the installation crew one day to 'check' the controllers. It was an impressive facility. There were multiple workstations with every Rigid tool known to man at each, all brand new.

It was a little eerie realizing you were under a lake. One of the guys had crawled into a penstock to install a lube point when they opened an adjacent one for testing. He came out a lot faster than he crawled it.

I'm assuming LA named Mulholland Drive prior to the dam collapse.

Try, try again. Castaic Dam is about 5 miles west of the St. Francis Dam, near the San Andreas fault line.

I'm not particularly claustrophobic -- Karchner Kaverns was exciting, not threatening; my tour of NORAD similarly so (2000' of stone over your head). But, am always amazed at how construction can be done, successfully, underground, in the presence of other buried/invisible "things".

E.g., The Big Dig has lots of opportunities to run into stuff it shouldn't. Or, you see documentaries of new subways being "threaded" between existing ones at different Z-levels. "Ooops! We're a couple of feet too high, Bob..."

You can claim "good recordkeeping" is the key but how do you know your records are complete in an area that has a long history?

And the Japanese are thinking about revisiting nuclear...

I'm sure there's some science that allows folks to assess the risk of placing a structure of type X at a distance of Y from a hazzard Z in soil of characteristics S. But, I'm equally sure they can't know, with certainty, that S is a constant or behaves in a certain manner under all conditions.

[How do you model 1,000 year events? 10,000 year events?]

Who in their right mind would build New Orleans where it is? What were the mathematical chances of Katrina and the damage inflicted?

ooops!

The Museum of Mining has a couple of physical models that were used in lawsuits between companies that claimed a neighbor had drifted into their claim. I was curious how they had even come close to mapping them in the early 20th century. Most of the gallows (headframes) are still standing in Butte adding to the scenery. They'd switched to open pit mining. When that shut down in '82 the pumps in the mines were turned off and so they and the pit are filled with toxic water:

Ajo has the Phelps-Dodge open pit, but being Arizona there only a small pond at the bottom of the pit. I imaging the pH and specific gravity is something else at this point. That one shut down in '82 or '83 also.

I enjoyed Karcher, Mammoth, Lewis & Clark, Howe Caverns and so forth but that was as far as it goes. The college outing club was divided between the spelunkers and the mountaineers and I definitely was in the latter group.

But you need local power to run your handset, modem, etc.

Traditional POTS you could operate in the absence of power -- both at your end and at the CO!

So, there's no "buffer" in your distribution network?

Margaret Thatcher would be proud! (ha!)

So, do you have an arrangement with europe to draw off THEIR stores to reciprocate for your helping fill them?

E.g., Feenigs routes some of their water allotment to us on the condition that we *store* it (in the aquifer) for them. (there likely are $$ involved as well) So, I'm sure they expect to tap us for that stored asset, eventually...

Must be wonderful to have cut your ties to The Continent and be able to go it alone! <grin>

So, not nearly enough to span a cold winter in the absence of other sources.

Amusing how strong the draw to power must be -- that folks seek it even if they'll be driving the bus when the shit hits the fan! (or, perhaps they've deluded themselves into thinking they can navigate the hazards?)

The powers that be may not pull through. And, special interests may continue to trip things up. But, eventually, promising cake and failing to deliver can cost one one's head! :>

Yet you allow EVs on your roads, indoor plumbing, etc. What are folks trying to preserve, beyond a superficial illusion?

I've only seen oil used as a source of heat in New England. Most of the rest of the country relies on natural gas, some electric/heat pump, some coal. Gas prices tend to be relatively stable whereas heating oil was a crap shoot from one tankful to the next.

There are efforts afoot, here, to allow for the creation of "micro-grids" that wouldn't be reliant on the public utilities. (they, of course, will fight this tooth-and-nail as it's obviously a threat to their business)

One can conserve on gasoline -- by driving less, carpooling, investing in a more fuel efficient vehicle, etc. And, to some extent, lower your electrical footprint (same sorts of remedies).

Heating/cooling are a different matter. There's only so much you can do to conserve (adjust thermostat setpoint a few degrees). And, you can't easily replace/upgrade the living space to make it more efficient. E.g., here, the floorplan is basically one large connected space with arbitrary functional divisions (living room, den, kitchen, family room, hallways, etc.) that don't have physical dividers -- like doors! So, you can't "idle" part of the living space to reduce your heating/cooling load.

[In the peak of summer, loss of an ACbrrr will often lead to internal temperatures approaching 100F, in short order.]

The city's natural gas supply was impeded (? overdrawn??) a few winters ago. Gas was available -- but not at sufficient pressure/flow rate to satisfy the safety cutoffs in most gas appliances. So, they would light and then promptly shutdown (as flame sensors wouldn't register enough heat to convince the appliance that the gas was actually *burning* and not just *flowing*!)

It was an interesting experience as most folks had lived with power outages but rarely *gas* "outages"!

The 12% will be perpetual. And, augmented with cost-of-fuel pass-thrus.

Unless some other "necessity" is impeded. E.g., a friend drives a "classic car". Unleaded gas -- the only kind one can buy, here -- leaves it pinging loudly. So, it costs him an extra $9/tankful to add lead additive to his tank. Someone without deep pockets would soon come to realize that the extra cost (50c/gallon of gas?) is a good motivator for change.

Scroll down to the map Castaic is where the severity starts fading from extreme to merely very strong. The I5/14 interchange fell down and went boom -- again. It was destroyed in the '71 Sylmar quake and a new, improved version constructed. I missed the '71 but I was a frequent flyer between LA and Seattle in '94 and it was a real mess.

You'd assume it was done by stacking *relative* measurements and trying to infer *actual* positions. Anyone with a bit of training knows how perilous that can be!

Most of the old mines are still visible at Cripple Creek. And, the tailings just strewn around the entrances ("just leave that; it's not OUR problem!"). IIRC, they've started mining the tailings to see if they can eek out a bit more gold without all the effort of *digging*.

They're looking to set up a new copper mine at Rosemont. "Hydro-mining" -- as if water wasn't already scarce!

Yeah, the idea of crawling into an unexplored hole in the ground just to see what MIGHT be inside doesn't appeal to me!

While the interior was impressive -- all the different formations (along with the amusing names assigned!) as well as the size of The Great Room -- I was more impressed with the lengths they had gone to keep the cave system "alive". The airlocks on the entrance/exit, moisture monitoring, etc.

And the "gestapo-like" attitude of the tour guides: "Don't TOUCH that (lest you kill it!)"

Yeah, but how do you, realistically, make those risk assessments?

It's one thing to look at a wager and the *mathematical* odds of winning and evaluate your risk/exposure. You KNOW that there is a 1:52 chance of drawing the ace of spades from a full, shuffled deck. Not 1:53 or 1:4.

But, all of this geological/natural stuff is "hopeful" analysis of odds. There's no real science that PROVES their numbers are correct.

And, even if you assume them to be correct, how do you do the expected value computation? What's the likelihood of $X of damage *if* this event occurs? What's a human life worth? What are the opportunity costs if certain services are off-lined for a period of N months?

Gotta wonder how the actuaries at the insurers make these same assessments from the other side of the table!

The Katrina flooding was a man-made event. The 17th St Canal and the Industrial Canal were the paths for the flooding. Both had stupid, poorly designed and maintained levees. The big old river and lake levees held.

For some interesting background, read Rising Tide by John Barry.

When I lived in NOLA, everybody knew that "the big one" would someday flood the city, so eat and drink and be merry. Katrina wasn't even the big one.

No, but you can make some decisions. The 5-14 interchange is an engineering marvel that rivals the cloverleafs that were featured in '50s LoonyTunes. Yes, the topography imposes limits but apparently adding a little more rebar and concrete wasn't good enough.

What are the odds of a 100 year floodplain seeing water? A lot of people in Tucson found out in '94 or '95 iirc.

My nephew of sorts is an architect in SF. When we met back east fora funeral and were doing so sightseeing he took a look at that and said 'Are you frigging kidding me?' although he phrased it more politely. Statistically a quake greater than 6.0 is a 670 year frequency so they rolled the dice. Still standing...

People are stupid . They build in flood zones and then cry about it when they get floded out. Same as those that build too close to the oceans.

It's never 'their' problem. ARCO bought the assets, not the liabilities. Anaconda built a golf course on part of the tailings but some are exposed. They were reworked at one point, not for gold but some other mineral. Gold and silver were a minor byproduct of the Butte mines; they were mostly copper.

The photo doesn't convey the scope of the tailings. Some are coarse rock, others are the fines from the floatation refining process and you can see the plume on windy days. P-D is long gone, of course.

Water was a problem there too. Obviously it's all fossil water from better days.

But you never really know *when* it's enough. You can say "it will survive these conditions"... but, can't really indicate the likelihood of those conditions occurring -- or worse!

Actually, we're at the fringe of the 100yr floodplain and didn't see any water. Hydrology can be very "local" in its effects.

Again, how do you KNOW it's an average 670 yr interval? Are you sure it's not 680? 510?

Like I said in my example, you *know* the ace of spades has a 1:52 chance of being the first card dealt from a deck. Not 1:51. Or, 1:73. And, you know

*why* that is the case.

You know that 0-0-0 is just as good a lottery pick as 4-1-9 (actually, probably

*better* if payout is related to number of winners as folks might shy away from 0-0-0 thinking it's a bad "number").

With all these natural events, there's a lot of assumption baked into the figures -- and that assumption is thereafter treated as fact (hidden behind phrases like "1 in a 100 year").

Likewise for natural "conditions": under what circumstances will THIS soil, right under my feet, liquify? What about THAT soil in my neighbor's yard (it's not identical to THIS but how different does it have to be to significantly affect that criteria)?

Is *this* lot a better choice (for some sort of minimized risk) than this OTHER lot? (why?)

[Off to figure out how to make granola as TJ keeps f*cking with their product offerings. Sears, Penneys, Monkey Wards, etc. All thought "house brands" were the solution. Look where it left them! Are you listening, Kirkland?]