murphy1244
Super Star Member
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2011
- Messages
- 16,336
- Location
- Ohio
- Tractor
- Kubota 1120 RTV Kioti DK-40, MF-135, Ventrac 4500Y
Both sides of this are nuts....:laughing:
Show me your solar powered tractors!!!
- Thread starter Catfish Man
- Start date
- Views: 5566
blueriver
Elite Member
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2007
- Messages
- 4,821
- Location
- S.E.Oklahoma
- Tractor
- JD 5520 Montana 4340 Farmall Super A Montana 5720C
OP
Catfish Man
Silver Member
that's your standard woman powered plow
WARNING - the engine is extremely high maintenance, you are guaranteed to never have any extra money again.
looknlearn
Gold Member
Here is one I bookmarked a while ago. It isn't mine and not completely solar but supposedly can be recharged by solar with the PV roof in half a day with, I would suspect, direct sunshine. It isn't anything like pouring gallons of fuel in and going all day and night and I'm sure you all will scorn it because it recharges off the outlet as well, but this is the best one I have found being made so far. It would work for small farms and large gardens. Not something a farmer could really use except for select small jobs. Cultivating corn or something where it can recharge while working. I would like to have one but the price tag is crazy unless you are used to buying new. I buy used stuff that needs work so my tractor budget is normally very small.
Renewables.com
Renewables.com
CompactTractorFan
Super Member
That is really neat!
rsewill
Veteran Member
CompactTractorFan said:
Agreed. Needs different color paint jobs to sell to the crowd that hangs around here.
Don87
Elite Member
Why does that picture make me want to buy a whip?:shocked::laughing::laughing:
Don87
Elite Member
I dunno.........I wouldn't say 'nuts'. Although some do believe that the use of 'fossil fuels' will destroy the planet. But new reasearch shows that oil is being found at depths at which no plant or animal could ever have existed on this planet..........suggesting that oil may not be a 'fossil fuel' after all.
Being the 'oil usage guy' guy that I am.......because oil can produce more horsepower and operate at a lower cost, for a longer period of time than current solar power can hope to achieve..............I'm not against anyone using solar if they so choose.
My concern is that people that believe the hype they hear on TV, about oil, will continue to destroy our economy in the USA based on uninformed, ill-conceived notions.
But, then again.............. 'If', and that's a BIG if.............Tesla was followed, instead of Einstein............it would be a totally different world.
k0ua
Epic Contributor
Yes the stock battery (without the aux. battery) was listed at 5KWH. so 5000 watts for an hour. so just under 7 horsepower for the period of 1 hour.. Of course on a battery you cannot really draw all 5000 watts in that 1 hour period... so even less. They said the stock PV cells would make 1000 watts. So 5 hours or more to charge it back up... I am doubting the 1000 watts from the array I saw, but maybe so.. Now with the 10,000 watt aux. battery. you could do a lot better, than the 5000 watt stock battery. but still the thing was a toy.. did you see it pulling a plow? NO you saw it pulling a man sitting on it in a low position planting seedlings. The talk of it pulling a mower for so many hours was highly optimistic. We have got to do better in battery tech. before an electric tractor ever becomes viable. Not saying we can't do it, just saying it aint here yet. We need 2 orders of magnitude better batteries and ways to charge them. The motors and controllers are pretty much ready to go now. For a field tractor we need a battery to deliver about 500 volts at about 100 amps and have a nearly flat discharge curve for about 10 hours at that rate. and it needs to be no bigger than about 3 foot by 3 foot cube and weight no more than 1500 lbs, and charge back up in under an hour. We could get by with half of that for smaller tractors. You bring me one of them and you and I are going into the electric tractor business, and we would have people busting down the doors to buy one. Until then..
James K0UA
