https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJOyITolHUk" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJOyITolHUk

Germany has been forced to revert back to burning coal to generate power after moving aggressively into solar and wind for the past 20 years.  The big challenge with solar/wind is reliability making them unsuitable for base load power generation.  Battery storage capability for the scale required in the world to manage base load storage is just not practical

And power costs increase when solar/wind facilities are installed,  but need to backed up with coal/gas/nuclear to provide base load reliability.  A very expensive way to provide power..........double the generation capacity required

The green solution is to live with blackouts.  I am not ready for that solution!!!

Dr Allis has noted the challenge for the Grid Infrastructure..........another detail the Greenies do not address 

Germany has learned some very expensive, embarrassing lessons chasing the green dream

I agree, renewables like solar and wind cannot handle what the industry calls peak loading, the only sources that can handle peak loading are nuclear, steam and Hydro.  But these fools in Washington don't seem to care that the infrastructure for green energy is not even in place yet nor do they seem to care that electric cars are too expensive for a large portion of this population to buy.

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RE: Europe re-starting coal power plants.

At least they have the old coal plants. In the US the Dimwits would create a hair brained "Cash for Clinkers" program that would require you to destroy the old coal fired plant.

Seems to me the utility/grid people are keeping mum about grid collapse.

But it could just be the news don't want to talk about it.

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How many you-all are using battery powered drill drivers?

How do the construction guys get through a day with battery powered nailers?

Electric weed whackers?

Factory fork trucks?

Swap battery packs... Or swap machines.

Home/Farm solar is a solution. It might take ten acres of panels to charge custom combine business  every day.

What I think would be cool: Tesla motor kit and battery block to convert an old stuck motor Allis WD over.

Or retired farmers that don't use their panels much after planting and harvesting to sell the power to the local city.

That's where I changed my attitude about electric everything. A farmer can control his fuel.

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from JCB's own website for the mini excavator...

For a 400 Hp tractor running on battery, to work a 12 hour day, would require a 3600KWh battery. I was able to find a 3000KWh battery, and its cost was $280,000.00.

A friend of my Wife's, was telling us about the solar panels they put on their roof, with a three day battery backup. The cost of the solar panels was $34,000.00, and they save $240.00 a month. At 5% interest, the solar panels will be paid for about the time they need replacing.

 the ultimate downfall of this country.

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help" ,,,,,,,,,,,,, President Ronald Reagan, August 12, 1986

also...

'defecit budget' (all guvs....)

and..

'minimum payment $10' (on credit cards)

Twenty years ago I spent a few hours with a guy growing bell peppers. Using big deep beds planting veggy transplants, conventional 60-90 HP  4x4 with all 4 tires being the same size no operator on the tractor. It just crawled down the furrow about 1/2 of normal walking speed. At the end of the row one of the 6 putting plants in the drop tubes jumped off and got on turned the rig around and back they went. Not long after that a guy got run over getting on or off. But government regulators still allowed the practice after the accident if there was a kill switch on the planter another person could stop the tractor with.

Have not kept up with the veggy business to know if any driver less tractor operation is allowed today or not.

You both raise very good points

Small battery powered tools are used today because they EARNED their place thru competition, ingenuity, and good old free market competitive drivers.  I am not aware of any government support for a battery powered drill, or power nailer etc. 

Government support (subsidies) for electric everything, cars, trucks, tractors, etc does not have the public support to benefit our modern society, simply because the complete story(truth) has not been provided.  Why can't electric cars compete with the market? 

Why don't greenies want to discuss the full cycle energy/environmental footprint for a solar panel or wind turbine (to Daehler's point) or an electric car?

Government subsidizing/promoting green power and penalizing/limiting other forms of power generation without justification is very bad for our economy.  The environmental basis for govt support of green only has not been vetted nearly enough, and there are huge information gaps when you look at these green only plans.  All forms of power generation should compete, as they have for many years.  Sometimes, certain projects (Hydro) requires government support, but those days are probably behind us now.

Just ask some of the countries in Europe (noted earlier in above posts) how it feels to experience power shortages, higher power costs, changing power generation sources, etc.  Europe's energy problems have brewed for years, long before Putin attacked Ukraine

And ask those guys with battery drills how they work when it’s 20 bellow.

And yes all those cordless things are great. But why can’t they ether make the battery last more then a few years or make the manufacture keep one style. When your battery goes bad the tool is discontinued and you have to buy all new things. But more importantly where’s all these bad batteries going. I called one day out of curiosity the 800 number on battery. Says to take it to our town highway dpt. Well iv heard they can’t get rid of them and end up in the dumpster. So in theory all this is to clean the air right. What’s to stop water pollution of all this stuff laying around.

And my buddy works in scrap yard. He said they won’t let electric car in the yard. Nothing worth recycling in them and there dangerous to work on.

America got way ahead of the world because people where free to pursue any idea, that most thought where crazy. Some the of the craziest have become the most useful. But generally the government programs get the cart in front of the horse. To make even more problems than answers.  

Excellent points.........totally agree

PS  My wife and I spent a week in Paso Robles in March, 2017, and really enjoyed the people, the town, and the surrounding area

I had an interesting conversation with my boss the other day.  We are both licensed professional engineers with a combined 70+years working in power generation.  We were doing a little math based on the typical power draw to charge an electric F150.

Not only is there no way the power generation is going to be there to support charging all the cars, the distribution system (especially in rural areas) can't even come close to handling the required current.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqppRC37OgI" rel="nofollow - What's Wrong with Wind and Solar? - YouTube

The big difference between battery operated power tools and larger equipment is that you can swap out a battery pack in seconds and, since they are not typically continually energized, the first pack can usually be recharged before the second is depleted.  The inconvenience of swapping out a battery is less of a pain than dragging around an extension cord.  That concept falls apart when the battery gets too large to carry a spare or two in a tool box.

I've seen where some municipalities are now demanding that TWO fast charge stations be prewired as part of the new build. So you have to ADD another 200 amp service ! All new builds up here are 200 Amp, so that'd be a 400 Amp service total !!!!

As well ANY electrical work done (with a permit) MUST have whole house upgrade to CURRENT code........ ka-ching, ka-ching...

They should be called battery powered, because they don't produce electricity to power their battery. Ones that do have a small engine that will charge battery when no hp is needed. (cannot go down hill forever).                       MACK

New Idea branded the GE electric tractor in the 70's  We sold a few.  Worked fine as long as you kept the blades sharp and the batteries maintained.    

Technology has changed a lot since then.   I suspect Electric equipment will have its place but I don't see it being a complete replacement any time soon.  

I remember the yellow GE electric mowers. From the '70's.

Ryobi has electric riding mowers for a few years now.

They use lead acid batteries. And there are problems with battery life.

This year they are switching to lithium and the price goes up 20%.

An electric chore tractor would work out for some.

   

great another song in my head, thanks...

very unlikely we will run out of oil for at least the next 4-5 generation unless someone does something stupid like ,um, setting fire to oil wells in the middle east.... same can be easily done here, doubt much security around oil wells ?

anyway the less there is , it just gets more expensive to keep profits high and taxes rolling into the guv.

there are readily viable means of energy though none line the pockets of those in charge or the one pulling the strings. In the end they die anyway, so WHAT is the point to amass billions ?

dang STILL got the song in my head......sigh.

I traveled Canada a lot as a technician trainer for a major construction equip mfr.  It always amazed me how receptive Canadians were (except one night in a bar, but that's another story).  And how much alike we are.  

I worked in the oil/gas industry in Calgary for 33 years for a large American Major (EM) and can't say enough about the great working relationships I experienced with the entire industry, contractors, suppliers, north and south of the Border. 

PS  10% of the population of Calgary are US Citizens

EdK wrote: I know California politicos have officially stated that starting somewhere around 2035 no more gas vehicles will be sold in the state. I'm not sure how many other states have made similar mandates. My question is are the tractor or heavy industrial equipment manufactures working on electrical powered equipment to meet these requirements? It's time to rejuvenate the A-C fuel cell tractor.

By the time 2035 comes around, California will either have been expunged of their basic 'leadership' ignorance, or it will become a futuristic desert wasteland like some Australian post-armageddon movie.

Water resources from the Colorado River have been withdrawn to such point that there is insufficient volume to support the urban growth of SoCal and Las Vegas.  Water level at the Hoover have fallen below minimum fall elevation, so they're not generating electricity.

This is a manifold problem:

1)  No water for irrigating California's cropland

2)  No electricity to power ancillary irrigation

3)  No electricity to charge any batteries.

    (yes, there's still solar, but the only 'reliable' source in so-called 'renewable' is hydroelectric, which has been filling pools, washing cars watering lawns, and operating cooling misters in the arid southwest, stripping the hydroelectrically-supported grid segments of viability).

The battery pack in my 24v cordless drill is what... 2400mA/Hr.  Doing the math, how many of those 2.4 ampere/hour battery packs would it take to run a modern combine harvester for one 27 hour harvest day??  A Deere S790's 13.5L  is running around 540hp... that's 405kW.  Let's round it to 400kW to simplfy the math...

So 400kW, for 1hr, is 400kW/Hr...  after a 27hour harvest day (which is around average in my area anyway), that's 27 x 400 = 10,800kW/Hr...  or 10,800,000w/h.

The cordless drill's battery packs quite a punch... 24v @ 2.4AH is 57 Watt/Hours.

10,800,000 / 57 is ... 189,474 cordless drill battery packs.

Hey... a high-performance 12v Lithium Deep-cycle is 54AH... that's 648 watt/hours, it'd only take... 10800000 / 16,667 of them... at 18lbs, that's only 300,000lbs of batteries!

But seriously, let's say we cut it down to just an 8hour run time...

it still won't work.

The battery array will still be too heavy at 88,900lbs, the 8 hour discharge would take the batteries to destruction in just one cycle.  If they didn't, the recharging station necessary would be exceeding the charge rate just to bring it back up in same time (8hours) of operational use.

Nature doesn't wait for planting or harvest.  A diesel-powered combine can be recharged from empty to full in about 15 minutes, without ever stopping any of the systems, and 330 gallons of diesel weighs 2340lbs.

Batteries cannot do this.