Priceless! Zero emissions, construction digger, runs out of power in 2 hours. Requiring it to be recharged using a diesel generator for 8 hours!!!https://t.co/MxOajTuRvU
— Canuck 🇨🇦 (@Sherloc10168034) July 18, 2019
HT/jtom
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Ha! Simple solution…just buy 4 of these so that 3 are always charging and you can get through an 8 hour day. Or just put 4x as many batteries in it. Or just plug the useless thing into shore power before you start working. Or just get the model with a mini CAT 20 Hp diesel like my 400 Amp Millar diesel welder.
Alternatively, insist on 2 hr working days.
That would solve the unemployment concerns at a stroke.
I think it is called job creation, by socialists?
Picks and shovels creates more jobs for Greenies. Carbon neutral recyclable wooden ones and piece rates naturally perfessors. They can count the tree rings during breaks for a bit of R&R and mental stimulation.
Hey , it’s simply why don’t they just hook the generator onto the back of the digger and let it tow it around? That why they would need less batteries !
Of course they’d have to move the “zero emissions” text to the side of the digger since it would get obscured by the “big, f-off diesel generator” on the back.
This is actually beautiful demonstration of the fallacy of all “green” zero-emission” vehicles they are trying to force on us. They always hide the “big, f-off” fossel fuel powered plant which is generating the electricity.
If you want to create jobs, then instead of picks and shovels an economist once posed the question, why not use teaspoons?
Norwegian 26 ton CAT conversion has 300kwh battery for 7-8 hours and 1- 2 hour charge. wi
I guess the JCB 1.9 ton with the 15 kwh battery was designed for municipal crews doing small jobs with minimal noise, confined space, or underground work.
The largest electric excavators are used in coal mining. With big power cables
300 kwh is like running 60 bhp for 8 hours. It’s not that much if you think about it that way. It works if you need power on demand during 8 hours, but if you need the equipment to keep working all the time for the said 8 hours – not so much.
I never buy a battery powered tool unless it comes with two batteries.
I just got a brilliant idea. How about a solar powered steam shovel?
I love my cordless rechargable drill, it has two batteries, one on one out. Trouble is, unlike a pro builder, I only use mine once in a blue moon for a little DIY. This means that if not urgent, I have to wait for one of the batteries to charge up for use, then I put the other one on charge for back-up Then again if I’m in a hurry, I get the trusty corded B & D drill out & plug it into the extension lead & off I go! Pro builders are using their drills constantly during the working day & putting them on charge over night, not much for the occasional DIY fella!
Alan, You bring your chargers to the worksite and rotate batteries as often as once an hour if you are using them constantly. Battery tech has a ways to go before you must only charge 2 of them at night for an 8 hour workday.
Used one on my previous job, and yes you always needed a battery (or 2) on charge. However, it was a lot more convenient than trying to find an outlet and dragging a power cord around.
The problem with this comparison is while current electric standards allow to easily charge a replacement battery if it needs, say, 3 kwh of energy, it’s not the case as soon as you get to 30 kwh. There’s just no infrastructure that allows to drain that much electricity easily.
well…coal fired steam shovels sort of qualify right? 🙂
Jeez, that thing doesn’t look big enough to dig a horse’s grave, much less do real construction. I’ll take a Bobcat trackhoe any day.
My favorite book as a kid, well at 5 anyway, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel
Mary Anne! And shed got recycled!
“steam shovel”
Good grief how dated!
You must be as old as I am.
🙂
Of course – I hereby seriously propose a national return to coal fired steam engines.
Or drive it off a cliff.
How about a hybrid?
Or you could harness a few oxen to the construction digger to mark the parts move. By the way, what is a construction digger? Is it what we call a backhoe?
You might attract unnecessary attention from PETA if you use oxen. 😉
I suppose that would be like a BEV running out of charge on a highway, and needing a (diesel) flatbed tow truck. Schadenfreude!
Or like this
https://mobile.twitter.com/mikepop2/status/1152016063766228992/photo/1
@jtom this could be considered tax fraud. If you get government money to drive electric, but then charge it with fossil fuels you kinda don’t deserve the government money. Someone call the police.
Should have recharged it with surplus battery stored free solar energy (at about 10 times the true cost).
And in winter, probably one hour of run time. There’s a huge world out there that those who think modern society can run on 100% renewables simply don’t understand how it operates. Mike Hudema needs to put that on his Pied Piper twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/MikeHudema
Agreed. Most folks that think well of renewables have only seen one side of the coin. The fact that they open an economic Pandora’s box hides unrevealed to these unwitting observers.
Don’t be a hater! After charging, it will run another two hours emissions free.
@Gamecock: Umm, what about all those emissions that were required to generate that electricity?
They’re out of their minds if they think they can run construction equipment or any other type of industrial equipment on batteries. The example in the video is just a small piece of equipment. Imagine what it would take to run large equipment like a D 9 cat that requires 800 or 900 horsepower to operate, and be able to do that all day at full power on demand. It’s just not possible. You couldn’t even run farm equipment.
I was thinking the same thing. Reality disappears.
Schedule and out of service time is a big deal for large construction projects.
Battery powered large construction equipment would be like working with a purposeless handicap.
… and how much CO2 would really be saved?
I’m confident in saying that mining equipment runs 24 hours a day. Down time is not an option.
Any off-road vehicle, farm equipment or rescue vehicle must be reliable and dependable with endurance in adverse conditions. The electric powered world is an impossible fantasy.
Could you run a taxi on electric? Yea, for about 2 hours. Great idea.
Ummm… I think you can run a Tesla taxi in city traffic for 5 or 6 hours, and it takes 20 minutes to get another 3 or 4.
I have never heard any suggestion of an electric ambulance or fire truck, and I agree it sounds like a bad idea.
Electric farm machinery isn’t happening, but some large stationary mining equipment like excavators or bucket excavators, are electric. There’s an electric coal tram locomotive at a historic mine site that looks pretty ancient.
Whatever works, right? Some places cordless beats rope start, sometimes not.
My city is buying battery operated garbage trucks…. :+(
Yikes!
“Zero emissions … my ass”
Perfect
And that’s hard to do.
From the looks of the cord going into the digger it was low amperage. Even so, only two hours on batteries? That puts a serious damper on productivity Construction, mining, and farm equipment are examples of impractical battery powered machinery applications.
The JCB spec says it’s equipped with both 110 & 230 volt inputs, and the option of fast charging. The genset was clearly capable of 230 volts (and probably 415v ~ 3 phase), yet the clip shows that it was plugged into a 230/110 volt site transformer – clearly the worst possible option. Whether this is due to specific site safety regulations about where the higher voltages are permitted, or them just being silly, I don’t know. But that doesn’t alter the woefully limited running time, or the (possible) need to move it closer to the genset before the battery dies completely! The conventional diesel model would most likely run all day on a tank full, and even if it needed re-fuelling, this can be done perfectly safely from a jerry can or mobile bowser.
PG&E is cutting our power … intentionally. And we’ll ALL be operating on gasoline or diesel generators. Behold California’s “green” future!!
They will be banned as soon as that starts to happen. Its for the planet.
Save Gaia, for that fellow Mann.
Planet lives matter!
And the job was scheduled for completion in 4 hours.
I can just picture the work crew productively standing by as the batteries recharge. Good work, if you can get it.
total of 8+2 hours makes 10. 2 of those were “green”.
This means we have made a 20 percent advance in greening stuff !!
At least according to UN/left/green accounting which is basically the counterpart to Hollywood accounting ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting )
The Greens have a plan for that.
Shovels and picks. Turn construction jobs into jobs program. That is part of the GND – a work program. And if too much work gets done and/or the workers become too productive limiting new hiring, they’ll be issued spoons instead of shovels. That is how the mind of a Socialist revolutionary like Bernie Sanders works.
Once they get people to believe in the lie of a zero emissions digger, anything is possible.
The famous Milton Friedman line about government ordering people to dig with spoons to employ more people comes to mind.
The image of people digging with spoons is quite striking, but I am not familiar with this saying. Could you explore this topic and tell me what Friedman said?
Quote Investigator: This quotation is usually coupled with a colorful anecdote, but the details of the stories vary greatly. Here is an account from the economics writer Stephen Moore that was printed in the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Moore stated that he used to visit Milton Friedman and his wife, and together they would dine at a favorite Chinese restaurant: 2
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
Don’t laugh, that’s been a fishery management strategy. When sail was replaced with motors, increased efficiency allowed catching more in a shorter time. In places depletion occurred faster, partly a matter of scale. Solution, if not still used, still suggested, go back to hook and line or the less efficient equivalent, takes more time, keeps you out of trouble. Sports fishing managed that way, commercial where allowed often went to quotas.
Work program? Give them spoons.
Here’s something from Milton Friedman the watermelons could learn from… if they’re capable of learning.
I want to be the operator of this wonderful machine. I will even wear a green hat, I promise.
Doesn’t matter; virtue signaled.
You have to admire his prose, when describing zero emission diggers….
Priceless indeed!
Thank you Charles TM for posting this. I needed a good laugh!
All this wind, solar and battery-operated stuff reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. It’s all for show in front of the curtain — and behind the curtain is a little man, or in our case, fossil fueled power generators.
I know the vast majority of people have little good scientific education or experience, but nearly everyone these days drives a car (w/battery), or uses flashlights (w/batteries), cell phones (w/batteries), tablets (w/batteries), or other portable electronic devices (w/batteries). All these users have experienced bad batteries, batteries with no charge, or batteries running low just when you need them the most. Apparently, too many of these people don’t notice that the wind doesn’t always blow, the sun only shines about half the time, and large-scale battery backup systems operate — or not — just the way all your personal batteries do.
Is it too much to hope that folks will notice the pie-in-the-sky nature of RE plus batteries before our power systems routinely go black?
People will use things when they make sense! Not many battery operated devices are ready for prime time and none are zero emissions if any type of proper analysis is done. Just virtue signaling pains…
Battery powered forklifts last longer than that. Could the work by diggers be much more difficult?
Yes. Much more difficult. Look at the hydraulics on a digger, look at the travel of them. Think of the energy dissipated by them wrenching soil out of the ground.
It’s a question of resistance. Battery forklifts only push against gravity and the weight of the object. This digger must push against gravity and the friction of dirt on dirt. Lift and shovel full of dirt and compare that with pushing through well compacted and, worse yet, gravely and/or clay soils. The amount of energy it takes to dig vs to lift is a vast difference.
That digger uses a small bucket. Guesstimating an 18-20″ spread at most.
Leverage and hydraulics should allow that machine to dig easily unless it runs into massive rock.
Compacted soil should not be a problem.
If they’re using that digger to dig through dry hardpan clay, then whoever rented the thing should be fired. If an amateur rented the thing for dry hardpan clay, they deserve the ridicule.
Wrong tool for the job.
They hired the normal size digger they needed for the job but alas. They’re not some weekend DIYers trotting down the hire shop once in a blue moon on that construction site.
Lift and move a wheelbarrow full of dirt. Then go dig and shovel enough dirt to fill that wheelbarrow. You will quickly realize the difference!
(Especially here in the desert Southwest. I call the dirt here in Tucson “proto-rock.” Apologies to the geologists, but it is pretty darn close. Construction project just south of me dug a six foot deep uncovered trench along the road over the winter, and we had several pouring rains after that – absolutely no erosion along the sides of it.)
To quote that famous philosopher Bugs Bunny: ” What a maroon!”
Talk about unintended consequences.
might be something to consider when fumes are a problem, say you are in the bottom of a well. Or inside a building, digging a new basement.
I work at a mine with both pit operations and underground drift and stope mining. The vast majority of both the heavy mining machinery as well as light vehicles used underground are diesel fueled. Rapid air exchange and improving exhaust emission systems make this possible. We mine palladium, used primarily in catalytic converters. The company slogan is “Metals for Clean Air”.
Still, academically, electric machinery and vehicles (with reasonable autonomy and reliability) wouldn’t be even better to use underground? No exhaust emissions, no engine noise, wouldn’t that be an improvement?
I think they’re switching to electric trucks for hauling but they traditionally use a lot of compressed air gear for underground mining and ventilation bearing in mind they can use compressed air to drive hydraulic equipment-
https://america.sullair.com/en/blog/using-compressed-air-mining-industry
re: “electric machinery and vehicles (with reasonable autonomy and reliability) wouldn’t be even better to use underground? ”
I’ve recently taken an interest in mines and mining; the bigger operations operate around the clock, so, the answer to your question would tend toward “no” rather than “yes” (given fueling takes minutes vs charging takes hours).
Maybe they could use battery powered generators instead of diesel.
One thing that one rarely sees comments on with respect to renewables capital equipment – generation or use – is asset utilisation. When I studied economics, a key factor in productivity growth was asset utilisation. The closer you could get to 100%, the cheaper it was to use the asset. Now that concept has been thrown out of the window by intermittent and inefficient renewables equipment – Hey! Who cares? As long as all the boxes on our green scorecard are ticked.
No doubt my understanding of economics, being pre-post-modern, is old fashioned and therefore no longer relevant to the world we live in – until the recession being held at bay by large quantities of cheap money kicks in.
“Asset utilization” is an excellent term. Thanks!
It IS priceless. Tell me again greenies how electrification of vehicles, equipment and public transport is going to save the world!
It just needs a hug.
And I just read that Berkley has banned natural gas for new construction!
The unstated real motive: the ban means little new construction, which means existing properties go up in value, which means greater property tax revenue.
It would have a viable application working inside tearing up cement floors and digging pits in a factory where you don’t want a gas engine, but it’s totally impractical for outside use.
But there are bigger units in the works. As far as I could find out, 40 tumes larger battery and 15 times more lift force.
Heavy work with the JCB in the video are as dumb as trying to drill a well with a DeWalt cordless drill.