Wake Up Call for Green Energy

[Ianab]

Air NZ has actually ordered an Electric aircraft, with a delivery date in 2026 I think. It's only a smaller 2 seat cargo model, and they plan to use it for courier / mail flights between the Islands. Trip distances up to ~100 miles. Currently there are dedicated cargo / mail flights, and they can justify a 737 for trips between the main cities, but the smaller centres are more of a problem between the Islands, often taking 2 days for "overnight". Within each Island road transport can get stuff between cities overnight, but coordinating 2 long road trips and a plane ride over one night gets problematic.

Anyway it's being treated as a real world trial at this point. If it works out, they plan to order more.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/12/06/air-new-zealand-reveals-its-first-battery-powered-electric-aircraft/

[SwampDonkey]

Purolator Carrier electrified their delivery trucks, hybrid, not full electric about two years ago. You still see on the sides of their vans the messaging. It hasn't worked now for a year. The driver that comes here said it was a failure, never worked. Canada Post is claiming carbon neutral deliveries of 50% reduction by 2030, 0% by 2050. Around the cities? Perhaps. Out here? A big nope.

[Ianab]

Interested to know WHY they failed?

Hybrid vehicles are a proven thing, they basically work. So if the hybrid delivery vans didn't work, what the heck did they get wrong in the design?  Maybe they were the Edsel or Pinto of Hybrids, and were just Lemons off the production line.

But that's also why Air NZ has ordered one, maybe 2 more, and options on 20 more in the future. If the first one is Lemon, they aren't committed to the rest of the order. But they will actually KNOW how practical the machine is after ~12 months of actual use.

[nativewolf]

Air NZ has actually ordered an Electric aircraft, with a delivery date in 2026 I think. It's only a smaller 2 seat cargo model, and they plan to use it for courier / mail flights between the Islands. Trip distances up to ~100 miles. Currently there are dedicated cargo / mail flights, and they can justify a 737 for trips between the main cities, but the smaller centres are more of a problem between the Islands, often taking 2 days for "overnight". Within each Island road transport can get stuff between cities overnight, but coordinating 2 long road trips and a plane ride over one night gets problematic.

Anyway it's being treated as a real world trial at this point. If it works out, they plan to order more.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/12/06/air-new-zealand-reveals-its-first-battery-powered-electric-aircraft/

Now that solid state battery solutions are getting closer to commercialization you'll see a lot more discussion on small electric planes.  They are much quieter than turbo props or small jets so good for urban airports.  500wH/kg is the magic number for energy storage.

[Southside]

Go long on NZ parachute manufacturers. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Well the NYC sanitation dept. has been trying hard to jump into that boat for over 3 years now testing garbage trucks. Seems they managed to get a full shift out of them for garbage collection, but failed miserably on pushing snow. All of NYC's trash truck are also snow plows, where they can't just plow snow out of the way, they have to lift and carry it some place in many cases.
I've been watching this one, because it foretells of the woes to come in other industries. Here is a good article I found.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/11/18/dsnys-electric-trucks-conk-out-too-quickly-during-snow-plowing-says-commish

[Riwaka]

Some States of Australia still have very high proportions of their grid electricity supply that come from fossil fuels (coal and natural gas).
Australia being relatively flat and fairly large land areas is constructing large solar pv farms.(and BESS)

The rest of the renewal electricity plan is following along.

https://theconversation.com/using-electric-water-heaters-to-store-renewable-energy-could-do-the-work-of-2-million-home-batteries-and-save-us-billions-204281

The new Kurri Kurri Power station (the decision-making around this power station could potentially be in future university course material about stranded assets)
https://infrastructurepipeline.org/project/kurri-kurri-power-station

Duxion Canada, electric jet
https://www.duxion.com/

[SwampDonkey]

The Duxion jet engine will use hydrogen fuel cells. They have a buyer interested in 200 of them for unmanned cargo aircraft.

[Ianab]

The Duxion is interesting. Their patent is for a electric "fan jet", with the motor basically on the rim of the fan. The electric windings are in a ring that fits in the outside cowling if the fan. It would then work like the big fan on a high bypass turbofan, and in theory allow the same sort of speeds as a turbofan aircraft. High Bypass is the reason new jet engines are so big, they push more power into the big "fan" section, and the turbine part is really only big enough to drive that huge fan.

Where the electricity comes from isn't actually important to the engine. It could be battery, hydrogen fuel cell, or even a hybrid design that worked in conjunction with a turbine.

Hybrid aircraft have been suggested before. Idea is that a plant only needs full power for a few minutes as it takes off and climbs, and modern jets are rated to be able to actually take off on one engine. So they are effectively carrying around 2X the engine they technically need. Of course the pilots use "takeoff" power setting to get up to speed and climb out quickly, but if they lose an engine just before lift off they carry on with the takeoff and just climb out a bit slower. So the idea is what if you had an electric boost for takeoff, then you could fly the other 90% of the flight with smaller and more efficient engines.

The Beta Alia plane that Air NZ has ordered (not just interested in, they have signed up to actually buy one) is a smaller prop driven machine. But they actually have the prototypes flying, so it's not just something on a CAD screen. They have flown it 480 km on a test flight, although I'm guessing that was unloaded.

It will be interesting to see what technologies are actually practical in real world operation.

Someone mentioned that Electric Rubbish trucks didn't cut it as they couldn't double as snow ploughs.  Thinking about it, it makes sense. As a rubbish truck they are slow speed, stop start driving, and each time they slow down, regen braking recovers some of the power they used getting up to speed. So they get good battery life, and don't actually do a lot of miles over a day. But try and plough snow, and now they are working under load (like going uphill all the time), and don't recover much energy braking. So battery life would be lousy. A diesel would just burn a bit more fuel, but it would get through the day with no worries. But that's what I mean by "real world" operation, in different conditions. What might work fine in a snow free NZ city, not so good in the Frozen North.

[SwampDonkey]

With regards to the Duxion jet engine,  a ground test is not the same as flying and propelling a plane. Like rockets to the moon, they discovered several problems even after the first successful flight to orbit.

As far as the delivery trucks, range and charging stations in rural Canada are a big part of it. Only about 20% of the chargers actually function reliably by the government's own admission. There are places over 100 mile stretches that even gas stations are sparse or not 24 hr, not so much a distance thing here in NB, but hrs. I wonder if these chargers are 24 hrs everywhere? May not be. And there is a reason a charger may not be 24 hrs, vandals. People will destroy picnic sites, signage, and wooden bridges. You get tired of fixing stuff after awhile.

[Southside]

24 Hour, unmanned, middle of nowhere charger?  Give it a week and the meth heads will have it stripped and the copper will be at a scrap yard. 

[Gary_C]

I understand that Cirrus Aircraft come standard with a whole plane parachute. Seems like a good addition to a battery powered aircraft. Then the pilot could just radio to the islands "Strong headwinds today, your mail is in the Pacific."

[Stephen1]

  :D :D :D :D :D

I understand that Cirrus Aircraft come standard with a whole plane parachute. Seems like a good addition to a battery powered aircraft. Then the pilot could just radio to the islands "Strong headwinds today, your mail is in the Pacific."

[Al_Smith]

They once thought mules and horses would remain on the farm long after motorized tractors became main stay .Other than a hand full of nostaligic horse men and the Amish still farm like that .I cannot in my wildest imagination starting out plowing 200-300 acres  with horses and mules .Not only would it take a lot of horses but a whole lot  of drivers .Take a lot of hay and oats to feed them also not to mention keeping the stables cleaned out .

[SwampDonkey]

Yet, horses were still used in farming up here on farms, well into the 50's. And a lot in the woods yarding into the 80's. Still a hand full yarding wood. No one could afford a tractor around here until quite awhile after they were on the market. A lot of old tractor collectors around, nothing older than late 50's early 60's. And in most cases they were not there own, nor their dad's. 200 acres is just a hobby farm these days. 800 acres plus are worked now. I have been around local Amish here, they have 200 acres growing up in golden rod, and plow 1/4 acre or less for a little garden. Drive down around Smyrna and Oakfield, Maine where they have migrated in in the last 15 years or so. They aint growing much, unless you can eat goldenrod. :D A lot of multigeneration farmers abandoned the place in the 90's.

[Southside]

A guy with horses would not farm 200 acres, that was your 1960's guy still on steel wheels.  The horse guy doesn't need to make the $ Million equipment payment, nor did the government force him into a tractor either. 

[SwampDonkey]

Wanna bet? It was farmed with a lot of outside labour, especially potatoes. Lots of farms here had lodging for folks to travel to work and stay. There was potatoes, hay to cut, wood to cut, grain. 200 acres was a good sized farm. There was always lots of little farms to. My great grandfather worked over 200 acres by horse. When I was a kid all the old equipment had a lot of wood as part of the machines, along with iron, it was all rotting into the ground setting in the abandoned orchard and 2 or 3 old wagon sheds full of stuff, with the sheds rotting into the ground. It was all horse drawn. Dad said his grandfather had all kinds of farm equipment for the day, several horse teams as well.

Digging spuds with horse for some perspective in first photo. On down you will see them hoeing (cultivating) the potato rows by horses very early 1900's , in my neck of the woods (Centreville).  Some Maine farming photos in the mix to.

Harvesting Potatoes by Hand in New Brunswick [Vintage Photos]

Of course not everything was plowed every year, hay ground was plowed less than grain fields if you wanted hay next June.

[Al_Smith]

Of course nobody in their right mind would horse farm 200 acres .That's just an exageration with humor intended .However if you are a history buff look up the Red River Valley circa 1900 .That was all horse farmed taking an entire day using two teams of horses making one pass end to end in one day .That's all they had to work with .They would start out in the morning with a fresh team,go to the half way house,eat lunch and change teams then on to the end .Get up the next morning before the rooster crowed and head out the other direction to do it all over again . I would speculate lots of skinny men and a lot of over worked horses .Besides all that wheat they had to make hay to feed the horses .More horses just  to feed the other horses that had to eat weather they worked or not .

[Southside]

Well given the historical guideline was that a horse could plow an acre of ground in a day a family farm wasn't going to come close to working that much land. 

[SwampDonkey]

If you had 4 teams of horses, you could plow 50-60 acres a week. A team could usually hoe/cultivate 7 or 8 acres of potatoes a day.

[Al_Smith]

My example was the mega farms in the western wheat lands .One for example employed as many as 800 farm hands to plow sow and harvest the wheat .One other had like 70,000 acres under tillage .Much larger than the 40 acres in the eastern corn belt during the time frame .When I was but a lad my dad had 70 acres of black ground and three tractors .Farmall F-14,John Deere A and Oliver 70 .Single row corn picker and AC combine with a 4 foot header .Besides having a full time job he still was able to farm on a small scale .The A plus the 70 had lights ,the Farmall did not .Besides the  crops also had pigs and steers .

[SwampDonkey]

A local dairy, recently retired, only had about 50 head to milk. They said they never had time to cut firewood, so bought it delivered. Dad milked maybe 20 cows at the most, farmed 450 acres of cropland, cut firewood for 2 houses and two potato sheds. He got rid of the cows around '76. He told mother he had to cut back on something, he can't works around the clock. ;D Still cut wood every winter and sometimes July (always the coldest and hottest  : ) Cut'n wood it was usually him and a hired hand or me (later) at most, planting involved mostly the family and no more than 1 or 2 hired men besides. Harvesting involved 6 hired folks. In the winter as many as 12 people were in the packing shed grading and packaging. Dad usually filled two jobs himself. And dad was always ready and waiting to begin work, nobody was waiting for him. His brother was just the opposite, was never ready and always late. :D

[thecfarm]

swampdonkey, not that it really matters, but the Amish in Maine don't have milkers. I went to PA and OH to see the Amish. They till some land!!
Seem like the Amish around here don't have the milkers. They are in Unity, Cornith, Smithfield,Wales,Mercer and the ones you mentioned and more and just a few miles from me, Livermore Falls. No big tillage of land in any of them.
None of them have the big field they work.
But a lot of them are English that turned Amish too.

It's a differant breed.
We went to Lancaster Co and everything was as neat could be. Lawns, houses and stuff around the barns too.
Seem like the ones in Maine could learn how to do some house keeping around the yard.  ;)

[SwampDonkey]

There is a dairy called Houlton Dairy Farms, in Houlton, Maine. Show me the dairy farms that feed it. I have not seen one around the Houlton area since the 90's. Some are those Amish goldenrod farms. It's the same thing I see with their so-called furniture making. You can go to one in Easton, big shop, tools, no one making anything. A show piece. I'd like to know how they can buy farms on nothing income. Kinda reminds me of Kings Landing, an historical settlement with actors. And people will think that is how everyone existed back then, doing hardly anything. :D

[Al_Smith]

I spent about 4-5 summers of traveling through the mid west on a sheep dipping crew  .Once near Lancaster Pa ,Amish milked at least 100 head of Holstiens .They had chillers and Surge milkers ran off Briggs and Stratton engines .The chiller was a diesel .Modern house but no power or phone lines .Had a team of big Belgians pulling a brand new New Holland bailer ,engine driven kicking bales out on the ground . The telephone  was about a quarter mile down the road in a phone booth .That would have been around 1962 .