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125 comments on Post-peak mechanized agriculture: the RAMSES project
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125 comments on Post-peak mechanized agriculture: the RAMSES project
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
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Somehow I just don't see this working ???
"I've heard that friable soils can be tilled into ridges with implements towed behind a tractor as low powered as 35hp/26kw "
But for how long ?
How many KWhrs to prepare and plant an acre ?
The tractor in this link looks to be about 60 hp/45kw. It needs an hour per hectare or 24 minutes per acre in an already well tilled soil. So I make that about 18 kwh per acre. A blade weeder and clay soil could increase that energy requirement considerably.
Remember that diesel (45 MJ/kg) has 450 times the energy density of a lead acid battery (0.1 MJ/kg).
On the presumption that mains electricity is
available for farming a solution is to provide
overhead supply as is done for trolley buses.
Two wires and the pickup on the roof of the
harvester etc.
It would need lines of poles across the paddock to
support the wire.
I suspect that this would be a lot cheaper than stacks of batteries that would need replacing at
intervals.
It would make the area between the poles unusable
but would be a small penalty for the almost unlimited
power that would be available.
The separation between rows could be quite large as
trolley buses can move right across multilane highways.
Good idea. Even that might not even be needed if human labour becomes cheap - just run cable direct from the power source to the tractor on trailing power cable, with a few farm workers managing the cable as it snakes behind.
There is this possibility of using rails or overhead wires to power tractors It has been done in the 1930s. It may come back; in this case we'll have hybrid systems. Batteries will still be needed for going around and for light work, but when it is time to go for the heavy work, the machines would be connected to the grid. Right now, the RAMSES vehicle is not made to run on an extension from mains, but it could be modified very easily to do so. Maybe it is the way of the future.