3 ms·

> a viable fully electric solution There are already major pieces of mining equipment and trucks for moving mining material that operate on this technology. If

by voisin 2y ago

> a viable fully electric solution There are already major pieces of mining equipment and trucks for moving mining material that operate on this technology. If it works for them I don’t see why farming would be more challenging.

cjbgkagh 2y ago
I think you'll find that this imagined generality does not go as far as you would like. Mines tend to be on hard ground while farms tend to be on dirt, make a tractor too heavy and it'll get bogged. When the tractor is an hours drive away from the nearest power outlet it just does not seem realistic. Diesel-electric can make a lot of sense, the fuel is the same and it does the same thing but more efficiently and with lower maintenance costs. I don't hate the idea of fully electric, if anyone can make the math work then great, but for the use case I mentioned I highly doubt it.
bluGill 2y ago
Mines do this for equipment that operates a fixed track (they can move the track, but not too often). When the equipment is more than a power cord away from a grid connection they use diesel. However electric is so much cheaper than diesel they will go out of their way to have a less efficient mine if it is reasonably possible.
- voisin 2y ago
  > Mines do this for equipment that operates a fixed track Ok, ignore mines (though I don’t think this statement is universally true), you can find the same examples in forestry where equipment out in the bush runs on electric batteries being charged by small onboard ICE engines, and the logging trucks themselves are switching to this as well. None are on tracks.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    Onboard ICE sounds more like diesel electric than fully electric. The addition of some batteries for efficiency and peak power availability doesn’t change things all much I would still call that diesel electric.

3 ms·

> a viable fully electric solution There are already major pieces of mining equipment and trucks for moving mining material that operate on this technology. If

by voisin 2y ago

cjbgkagh 2y ago
I think you'll find that this imagined generality does not go as far as you would like. Mines tend to be on hard ground while farms tend to be on dirt, make a tractor too heavy and it'll get bogged. When the tractor is an hours drive away from the nearest power outlet it just does not seem realistic. Diesel-electric can make a lot of sense, the fuel is the same and it does the same thing but more efficiently and with lower maintenance costs. I don't hate the idea of fully electric, if anyone can make the math work then great, but for the use case I mentioned I highly doubt it.
bluGill 2y ago
Mines do this for equipment that operates a fixed track (they can move the track, but not too often). When the equipment is more than a power cord away from a grid connection they use diesel. However electric is so much cheaper than diesel they will go out of their way to have a less efficient mine if it is reasonably possible.
- voisin 2y ago
  > Mines do this for equipment that operates a fixed track Ok, ignore mines (though I don’t think this statement is universally true), you can find the same examples in forestry where equipment out in the bush runs on electric batteries being charged by small onboard ICE engines, and the logging trucks themselves are switching to this as well. None are on tracks.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    Onboard ICE sounds more like diesel electric than fully electric. The addition of some batteries for efficiency and peak power availability doesn’t change things all much I would still call that diesel electric.