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Do we have electric tractors? Are they viable given that weight is a serious issue for machinery on fields? Having lived on a rural farm, with solar panels on

Do we have electric tractors? Are they viable given that weight is a serious issue for machinery on fields? Having lived on a rural farm, with solar panels on the barn, if you can use the harvested power on the farm, great, but once you start trying to distribute it, the problems start to show up because rural infrastructure isn't good, and there isn't enough demand in the local grid.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Sounds feasible. You’d need battery storage or less batteries and orchestration to charge farm equipment during solar production hours if no grid connection available, but micro grids are a well worn path at this point. Very popular in Australia’s western geography and their Northern Territory, where there is not much transmission infra to speak of. https://electrek.co/2022/11/23/caterpillar-demonstrates-first-battery-electric-792-large-mining-truck/ https://electrek.co/2022/11/23/caterpillar-demonstrates-firs...
worldsayshi 3y ago
> infrastructure isn't good I've heard this enough times that I might assume this is the bottle neck of a green transition of our electrical generation. What is being done about this? Is it an area where innovation or disruption can still happen? Are there any interesting things on the horizon for taking big leaps on fixing the electricity infrastructure? As a Fullstack/Cloud/Data engineer where could you put your feet down to contribute to solving this problem?
- newsclues 3y ago
  Decentralized power isn't what the power companies want. The innovations aren't being pursued because of economics and greed.
  - worldsayshi 3y ago
    So let's decentralise (human) power (over the grid)? But how?
Schroedingersat 3y ago
The entire reason it's being done is the 3% of farmland which is sitting directly on interconnect is more than enough for all the solar that is needed and reactionaries keep having a hissy fit at the idea of replacing topsoil destroying and water polluting energy corn with less polluting PV. You can't then turn around and whine that the transmission line is too far away. Just don't build it on the other 97% of the farms.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Sounds feasible. You’d need battery storage or less batteries and orchestration to charge farm equipment during solar production hours if no grid connection available, but micro grids are a well worn path at this point. Very popular in Australia’s western geography and their Northern Territory, where there is not much transmission infra to speak of. https://electrek.co/2022/11/23/caterpillar-demonstrates-first-battery-electric-792-large-mining-truck/ https://electrek.co/2022/11/23/caterpillar-demonstrates-firs...

worldsayshi 3y ago

> infrastructure isn't good I've heard this enough times that I might assume this is the bottle neck of a green transition of our electrical generation. What is being done about this? Is it an area where innovation or disruption can still happen? Are there any interesting things on the horizon for taking big leaps on fixing the electricity infrastructure? As a Fullstack/Cloud/Data engineer where could you put your feet down to contribute to solving this problem?

newsclues 3y ago
Decentralized power isn't what the power companies want. The innovations aren't being pursued because of economics and greed.
- worldsayshi 3y ago
  So let's decentralise (human) power (over the grid)? But how?

Schroedingersat 3y ago

The entire reason it's being done is the 3% of farmland which is sitting directly on interconnect is more than enough for all the solar that is needed and reactionaries keep having a hissy fit at the idea of replacing topsoil destroying and water polluting energy corn with less polluting PV. You can't then turn around and whine that the transmission line is too far away. Just don't build it on the other 97% of the farms.