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I wonder what interesting features electric vehicles and farm equipment could have to power other devices? A lot of old jeeps used to have PTO ports on the tra
by elihu 4y ago
I wonder what interesting features electric vehicles and farm equipment could have to power other devices?
A lot of old jeeps used to have PTO ports on the transfer case, so you could use the jeep engine to power machinery. I suppose you could do the same thing with modern vehicles, at the cost of some mechanical complexity.
A more interesting option on EVs would be a big switch to disconnect the 3-phase AC motor from the motor controller, and route the power to an external plug with three conductors and some sort of control interface. The idea would be to use the car's motor controller as a programmable power supply for just about anything. You could have it generate normal 50 or 60 hz AC power (single phase, double phase, or 3-phase) at any voltage up to the pack voltage, or it could supply DC, or it could act as the power supply for an arc welder, or it could act as a motor controller for just about any kind of motor (with the control interface used to update the motor controller on the motor position, for motors that require that sort of thing).
There's this problem generally with electrically-powered devices like electric lawn mowers and chain saws, that they're limited to about 2 horsepower because that's about the limit of what you can send over a 15-20 amp circuit at 115v AC. 220V AC gives you more power for things like big table saws, but there isn't really a standard for 220v household extension cords, as far as I know. But a typical EV motor controller (or the battery directly) can supply hundreds of horsepower worth of electrical energy. It's kind of scary, actually, when you think about it. You could power a lot of stuff with that, if we just had interconnection standards.
- solraph 4y ago> but there isn't really a standard for 220v household extension cords Well, there is there in the rest of the world, outside of North America. Most of the power plugs are 220v-240v @ 10-16 amp (depending on country, plug, etc). Picking an existing standard would work here I think.
- p_l 4y agoThere are also standards for 3-phase industrial power plugs etc.
- lnsru 4y ago3,7 kW extension cords are very normal in Europe. Of course, only brand names can do that. Asian manufacturers cheat and do 2-2,5 kW cabling. With 3 phases 11 kW is also no big deal. Older equipment had this type of interface. Modern tools use only 2 phases.
- bluGill 4y agoElectric motors are not very expensive, just buy one and save all the complexity of having your car allowing it to be disconnected.
- jcims 4y agoNot exactly what you're describing, but the F150 Lightning has a feature called 'Pro Power Onboard' that provides up to 9.6kw of power on 240v and 120v outlets in the bed. This is plenty of power to run a welder, air compressor or other item that would have traditionally required hauling around a large generator. To your point, however, this is just a stopgap b/c a) it requires an expensive inverter that is otherwise completely useless on the truck and b) the power is still somewhat limited. As a result, there's not much incentive for a manufacturer to create high power electric tools that could take advantage of this ability because the market is extremely limited. It does seem like something that will naturally evolve, however. I'm looking forward to a nice electric log splitter that actually has some guts.
- m463 4y agoI got the feeling farm equipment PTO was super dangerous. An electrical system might be not only useful, but safe. That said, there are standards for powering devices. Usually generators, which generally work from 110/20amp 110/30 amp locking and sometimes 220/50 amp