Would you buy an electric tractor?

[Grumpycat]

Well which one is it? All I hear about is rolling brown outs and electrical shortages of energy in Kalifornia and how our electrical grid is a 1950’s era antiquated mess. We literally just removed some power lines with freakin glass insulators that looked like they were from the 1900’s telegraph era in my community and I know they wont carry the power needed for everyone in my community to be charging Teslas all night & every night.

Kalifornia's problem is of their own making. Enron (and others) greased palms and convinced California Public Service Commission Commissars that they could create competition and lower prices by forcing utilities to divest of their investments. Many were forced to sell plants for less than what they owned.

So now the utility does not have sufficient capacity to meet demand and must buy electricity from the plants they built and were forced to sell. Those plants are not price controlled, prices rise when demand rises. At a certain point the utility turns power off rather than pay scalper's prices.

Utilities can not raise capital to build new generating plants based on the Commissars forcing below-market sales in the past, even if they could get it past all the other regulatory hurdles in California. Its like trying to build an oil company after the government nationalized the existing oil companies.

Utilities are not allowed to maintain power lines or cut undergrowth in California. The PSC is all-knowing and all-wise to combat this "wasteful spending". Nothing wrong with a 60 year old glass insulator. Heck of a lot right if it lasted that long.

As proof of my original statement about sufficient capacity, California does not have rolling blackouts at night.

 

[Grumpycat]

When I was working in Kalifornia East Bay 3 years ago, all the talk out there was how Tesla had to built a warehouse to hold all of the "bad" batteries they were building

Thats interesting because Tesla doesn't build batteries in Kalifornia.

 

[Hay Dude]

My home state of Virginia gets 40% of its power from nuclear and 60% from coal. Nuclear is used to handle the base load and the coal plants are throttled to handle the daily load changes.

Southern Virginia has one of the largest uranium deposits in the world (the Coles Hill deposit) but it can稚 be mined because Virginia banned uranium mining.

The peoples Demokratik republics of IL and PA are the 2 most nuclear power supplied states. South Carolina #3.
Nuclear Power is the way to go. It doesnt care if the sun is out or the wind isnt blowing.
PA just took the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear reactor off line in 2019. It will cost over a billion dollars just to take it off line.

 

[Tractorable]

My uncle used to run the Savannah River Nuclear power plant near Savannah Georgia. He taught me a lot about nuclear power and how on a per kilowatt basis it’s the safest form of power generation.

It’s a shame that so many people incorrectly associate nuclear power with nuclear weapons, they’re completely different. They just hear the word nuclear and freak out. You can handle new nuclear fuel rods without any protection. It’s safer to go swimming in a spent fuel rod cooling pool than it is in your neighborhood pool.

If the Soviets hadn’t built such a poorly designed reactor like Chernobyl, and if the Japanese had raised their generators higher than the tsunami waters then we wouldn’t have to deal with all this PR mess. Nuclear still is the safest form of energy on a per kilowatt hour basis.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I made similar points a few pages back.
If the future of transportation is going to be electrical power, that is nothing new. Electric vehicles, trains, ships have been around since the early 1900s
However, due to a lack of fully educating people, they dont understand we dont have the power grid and generation resources to accomplish it. We dont have enough power plants or recharging stations.
Nuclear power is the way to go, not solar panels or wind farms.
Until then, we will have to use more coal to recharge all those batteries.

Glad to see you and Elon Musk are in agreement on nuclear power. Now if we can just get you to stop posting 50 year old facts about the grid like they are currently factual.

 

[Hay Dude]

Glad to see you and Elon Musk are in agreement on nuclear power. Now if we can just get you to stop posting 50 year old facts about the grid like they are currently factual.

Ok, so if I show you a picture of a power pole just removed from power line system in my neighborhood with dowel pegs that held the old green glass insulators, would that change your mind that the power grid in my area is antiquated? Would that be factual enough for you, Gale Hawkins? It was just removed last week. If it’s still there tomorrow, I will take a picture of it laying next to the road.
Also, am I to understand you are saying we DO have enough charging stations for electric cars? Cause I sure as heck don’t see even 1% of the charging stations we need.
There needs to be an infrastructure preparation put into place. That’s not a 50 year old fact, that’s a current/future fact.

 

[Hay Dude]

My uncle used to run the Savannah River Nuclear power plant near Savannah Georgia. He taught me a lot about nuclear power and how on a per kilowatt basis it’s the safest form of power generation.

It’s a shame that so many people incorrectly associate nuclear power with nuclear weapons, they’re completely different. They just hear the word nuclear and freak out. You can handle new nuclear fuel rods without any protection. It’s safer to go swimming in a spent fuel rod cooling pool than it is in your neighborhood pool.

If the Soviets hadn’t built such a poorly designed reactor like Chernobyl, and if the Japanese had raised their generators higher than the tsunami waters then we wouldn’t have to deal with all this PR mess. Nuclear still is the safest form of energy on a per kilowatt hour basis.

Three Mile Island didn’t help much, either.
My uncle was in charge of the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant in PA

 

[lilranch2001]

I live 10 miles outside of the second largest metro area in Indiana along a US highway, and 3 miles from an interstate, and the closest commercial charging station is over 10 miles from me, that does not speak well for commercial chargers!

 

[MossRoad]

I live 10 miles outside of the second largest metro area in Indiana along a US highway, and 3 miles from an interstate, and the closest commercial charging station is over 10 miles from me, that does not speak well for commercial chargers!

There aren't very many, that's for sure.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Ok, so if I show you a picture of a power pole just removed from power line system in my neighborhood with dowel pegs that held the old green glass insulators, would that change your mind that the power grid in my area is antiquated? Would that be factual enough for you, Gale Hawkins? It was just removed last week. If it’s still there tomorrow, I will take a picture of it laying next to the road.
Also, am I to understand you are saying we DO have enough charging stations for electric cars? Cause I sure as heck don’t see even 1% of the charging stations we need.
There needs to be an infrastructure preparation put into place. That’s not a 50 year old fact, that’s a current/future fact.

Yes you will need 240 volts at home to charge an electric tractor or car. In the USA the grid is good to go in most places where home air condition is common. Keep in mind we are talking 30+ years from now before electric tractors, cars and trucks are in majority and a few of us may not be living 30+ years from now to see it. Most of the old line car makers will be going out of business just because of not making batteries fast enough to keep up. It will be 2025 before evenTesla can be shipping 5 million EV's yearly and currently they are light years ahead of the pack. I too had a lot of misunderstands about the world of EV's a year ago but after owning one for 15 months and charging in most nights while I sleep a lot of my fear of EV's have disappeared. Most will not need to even own an EV because at a click on our phone one will show up without a steering wheel or pedals like magic. Hold off getting an EV as long as you can because they are coming down in price like microwave ovens and VCR's did yesteryear.