14 ms·

While I applaud the move away from small ICE tools, I have to wonder how e.g. landscaping services will adapt. A day's work will certainly outstrip the capacity

by Arrath 5y ago

While I applaud the move away from small ICE tools, I have to wonder how e.g. landscaping services will adapt. A day's work will certainly outstrip the capacity of a single battery for a lawn mower or leaf blower. So the contractor will use multiple batteries, and likely have a charging setup mobile with them. How will they power the charger, by running a small generator on their equipment trailer, by idling the work truck and using an inverter or like?

chatoyance 5y ago
In Palo Alto, to get around the leaf blower ban, they would put a Honda generator on a furniture dolly to power a corded electric leaf blower. Also, in rural NorCal, generators are essential when PG&E turns off the power (PSPSes) for up to weeks at a time. Powerwalls are unlikely to replace these. Also, rural construction projects rely on generators.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
Electric trucks like the F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T with their built in electrical outlets and massive batteries would solve the problem almost entirely. With that you’d only need a couple of backup batteries in a charger plugged into the truck. Naturally companies won’t roll their truck/van fleets over right away but this pressure has potential to advance the timeline of that particular transition significantly.
- grillvogel 5y ago
  most landscaping operations are just a couple dudes and a old truck. now they have to buy a top of the line electric F150 to do their jobs?
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    That’s just how it is now. In a few years, there will be old electric trucks to buy for such purposes. If combined with a phased banning of small ICE devices (such as that proposed by another comment on this story’s thread), the transition won’t be too bad. It’s never going to be perfectly smooth and it has to happen at some point.
    - flutas 5y ago
      > In a few years, there will be old electric trucks to buy for such purposes. With degraded, old batteries to match.
    - dzhiurgis 5y ago
      s/few years/few decades/g
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- flutas 5y ago
  > Electric trucks like the F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T with their built in electrical outlets and massive batteries would solve the problem almost entirely. With that you’d only need a couple of backup batteries in a charger plugged into the truck. > Naturally companies won’t roll their truck/van fleets over right away but this pressure has potential to advance the timeline of that particular transition significantly. Then you're just siphoning power from your transportation. With the limited-ish range on EVs[0][1], EPA estimates not being loaded down with the extra weight of equipment, and power losses due to voltage conversion I don't see this as a viable alternative...yet. Add in the cost of these vehicles being much higher than current ones[2][3] and this is most likely a non-starter for most of the affected. [0]: F-150 Lightning is estimated at 230 miles on the regular config https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/2022/ https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/2022/ [1]: Rivian R1T is very vague throwing out an EPA estimate of 314, then mentioning 400+ or 250+ mi https://rivian.com/r1t https://rivian.com/r1t [2]: F-150 Lightening starts at $39,974, a standard F-150 starts at $29,290. [3]: Rivian R1T starts at $67,500
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Similar to the "electric cars will just use coal powered electricity" argument, what you describe sounds like an improvement from the status quo even in a worst case scenario, and something that simple economics will take care of anyway.
- Arrath 5y ago
  Certainly, I'm not trying to posit it as a reason not to move towards these tools, just thinking out loud. I would think one small genset powering a bank of chargers is more efficient than a handful of small ICE engines in varying states of maintenance and tuning but honestly don't know.
dzhiurgis 5y ago
Maybe just buy 12 batteries that last 1 hour each? Given labour costs in California that's probably few days worth of investment? Also - does the law even apply to professional market? In a way if the tools are so good they would've switched way earlier than consumer.
tinus_hn 5y ago
The same way a battery powered drill works, it uses swappable batteries and there’s a million different ways to charge them, from mains, from the sun, from the car, from another battery, whatever you want.

by Arrath 5y ago

chatoyance 5y ago

In Palo Alto, to get around the leaf blower ban, they would put a Honda generator on a furniture dolly to power a corded electric leaf blower. Also, in rural NorCal, generators are essential when PG&E turns off the power (PSPSes) for up to weeks at a time. Powerwalls are unlikely to replace these. Also, rural construction projects rely on generators.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

Electric trucks like the F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T with their built in electrical outlets and massive batteries would solve the problem almost entirely. With that you’d only need a couple of backup batteries in a charger plugged into the truck. Naturally companies won’t roll their truck/van fleets over right away but this pressure has potential to advance the timeline of that particular transition significantly.

grillvogel 5y ago
most landscaping operations are just a couple dudes and a old truck. now they have to buy a top of the line electric F150 to do their jobs?
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  That’s just how it is now. In a few years, there will be old electric trucks to buy for such purposes. If combined with a phased banning of small ICE devices (such as that proposed by another comment on this story’s thread), the transition won’t be too bad. It’s never going to be perfectly smooth and it has to happen at some point.
  - flutas 5y ago
    > In a few years, there will be old electric trucks to buy for such purposes. With degraded, old batteries to match.
  - dzhiurgis 5y ago
    s/few years/few decades/g
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
flutas 5y ago
> Electric trucks like the F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T with their built in electrical outlets and massive batteries would solve the problem almost entirely. With that you’d only need a couple of backup batteries in a charger plugged into the truck. > Naturally companies won’t roll their truck/van fleets over right away but this pressure has potential to advance the timeline of that particular transition significantly. Then you're just siphoning power from your transportation. With the limited-ish range on EVs[0][1], EPA estimates not being loaded down with the extra weight of equipment, and power losses due to voltage conversion I don't see this as a viable alternative...yet. Add in the cost of these vehicles being much higher than current ones[2][3] and this is most likely a non-starter for most of the affected. [0]: F-150 Lightning is estimated at 230 miles on the regular config https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/2022/ https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/2022/ [1]: Rivian R1T is very vague throwing out an EPA estimate of 314, then mentioning 400+ or 250+ mi https://rivian.com/r1t https://rivian.com/r1t [2]: F-150 Lightening starts at $39,974, a standard F-150 starts at $29,290. [3]: Rivian R1T starts at $67,500

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Similar to the "electric cars will just use coal powered electricity" argument, what you describe sounds like an improvement from the status quo even in a worst case scenario, and something that simple economics will take care of anyway.

Arrath 5y ago
Certainly, I'm not trying to posit it as a reason not to move towards these tools, just thinking out loud. I would think one small genset powering a bank of chargers is more efficient than a handful of small ICE engines in varying states of maintenance and tuning but honestly don't know.

dzhiurgis 5y ago

Maybe just buy 12 batteries that last 1 hour each? Given labour costs in California that's probably few days worth of investment? Also - does the law even apply to professional market? In a way if the tools are so good they would've switched way earlier than consumer.

tinus_hn 5y ago

The same way a battery powered drill works, it uses swappable batteries and there’s a million different ways to charge them, from mains, from the sun, from the car, from another battery, whatever you want.