I am looking to trade my Mahindra 2810HST for more horsepower. My 15KW pto generator got me through hurricane Irma just fine even though it specs requiring 32HP. May not have gotten fully loaded but still want that capability. Additionally, considering a tiller which requires 35HP. I don't know if these ratings are tractor or pto horsepower requirements. These are the needs in regard to a tractor upgrade.
I'm perfectly happy with Mahindras but my original dealer is no longer. I still have access to a Mahindra dealer but have a much closer Kubota dealer, a Massey dealer another 20+ miles and a Deere a bit further.
I've read many posts here in regards to trading vs. selling privately so that's another issue to deal with should I sell privately, especially in regard to a buyers payment verification.
So that's the things to be considered and I know the question of manufacturer has been asked here thousands of times but given these needs your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
The recommended power for a PTO driven implement is usually listed as PTO horsepower rather than engine horsepower, as the horsepower that is actually provided at the PTO is what matters to the implement. However, any manufacturer can pick any recommendation they want, so you would need to read the information carefully. In general a small PTO generator will turn about 75% of PTO power into electricity, so a 15 kW generator would require about 27 PTO HP (20 kW) to provide full rated power. Generators are often rated at both a "surge" and "constant" rating, so I wonder if it requires 32 PTO HP (24 kW) to provide an 18 kW surge rating and the 15 kW is the constant rating. Your tractor with 23 PTO HP could run a typical PTO generator to about 12 kW load. Generators are one implement where you can run a larger implement than your tractor can power and be okay with it, just do not put more load on the generator than the tractor can handle.
As an aside, 12 kW is 100 amps of 120 volts or 50 amps of 240. That's a pretty fair amount of electricity and will run pretty much any single thing in a house except for most resistive backup strips for a heat pump or a lot of electric baseboard heat. If your house is mostly gas like my current house is, you will most likely rarely if ever use more electricity than that unless your house is huge and requires more than 8 tons of A/C. The worst my current house has done was draw 15 kW when both A/Cs and the electric dryer were all on at the same time. Most months it never exceeds 10 kW. If your house is "all electric" you will probably use a whole lot more electricity than that. I had an "all electric" house in the past with resistive backup heat pumps and those drew a total of 36 kW when they kicked on. Peak usage was just under 50 kW in that house, simply did some laundry and had the water heater kick on when the furnace backups were both on.
How much power a rototiller takes depends on its width and also how deeply it can till. Most of the typical 7' and under rototillers take about 5 PTO HP per foot of width to run, so a typical 7' rototiller would take about 35 PTO HP to run, which works out to an engine HP of roughly 45. If it is indeed rated in engine HP, 35 engine HP can yield anywhere from about 30 PTO HP down to about 25 PTO HP depending on the efficiency of the driveline and if there are other things like a cab A/C sucking power from the engine, so that could be either a 5' or 6' rototiller. I have a 6' rototiller and ran it behind a tractor in the past with the same power ratings as your Mahindra. It just barely ran the tiller, a 5'er would have been a much better fit.
A ~35 PTO HP tractor can be anything from the highest-powered version of a medium-sized compact (e.g. Deere 3046R) to the lowest-powered model of a full-sized utility tractor (e.g. Deere 5045E/5050E.) There are pretty significant differences between a full-sized utility tractor and a compact. The utility machine will be a lot larger and heavier, have a clutched gear transmission, and have a category 2 3-point hitch. It will also be noticeably less expensive in most cases than a compact of the same power. They are really made for different markets but overlap in power so some people compare the two.
