electricity Archives - North America FarmQuip Magazine

Caprari introduces the Inclined Installation for Submersible Electric Pumps

Michele Catinari — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 16:00:58 +0000

For years Caprari has been installing inclined submersible pumps on riverbeds, lakes, and artificial basins where this application is highly recommended and effective.

With this method the pumped water is primarily used for irrigation purposes; however, it is also used for flood control or water supply in general.

Over the years, this type of installation has also been used for other applications where system and environmental requirements were similar to those above: mines, industrial plants, etc.

Inclined submersible pumps offer numerous advantages compared to vertical pumps or horizontal pumps mounted on floating platforms, particularly because they are easily installed. The pump inclined on the bank of the basin requires no large structural parts to be installed, with consequent cost and time-saving.

Another important advantage of inclined submersible pumps is that they are highly compact machines and can be positioned on banks with very irregular slopes with no need for the shaft to be aligned, contrary to a vertical turbine pump.

Finally, the well-appreciated characteristics of this solution: pumps are easily handled, bearings are less stressed and the level of noise generated by these pumps is low.

The choice among a wide range of wet ends and submersible motors combined with Caprari know-how assures total reliability and efficiency in the selection and installation of the product with a guarantee of a long operating life of the system as demonstrated by the dozens of projects installed around the world.

Installations of the inclined submersible pumps are found in Queensland, Australia, where the banks of the water basin are very steep.

The solution offered by Caprari enabled an efficient water pumping system to be quickly installed to permit irrigation of the surrounding areas.

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Agriculture Retailers Association Releases New Study about Impacts of Increased Electric Vehicle Penetration

Michele Catinari — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 16:00:05 +0000

The Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA), a member of the Transportation Fairness Alliance, has released a new study that analyzes the impacts of increased electric vehicle penetration on U.S. biofuels, agriculture, and the economy. Proposals to ban internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 and 2050 served as the economic models for the study, along with a base case provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook.

The study found that U.S. light-duty and freight vehicle consumption of ethanol and biodiesel could decline up to 90 percent to 1.1 billion gallons and up to 61 percent to 0.8 billion gallons, respectively.

Corn and soybean consumption could decrease by up to 2.0 billion bushels and up to 470 million bushels, respectively. Corn prices fall up to 50 percent to $1.74 per bushel, while soybean prices fall up to 44 percent to $4.92 per bushel.

Overall, U.S. net farm income would decrease by up to $27 billion due to a proposed ban.

This study makes clear that an internal combustion engine vehicle ban could devastate the agriculture community. Proposals that seek to rush this ban to 2035 have the most severe impacts, but any ban results in dramatic decreases in ethanol, biodiesel, corn and soybean prices, and demand for fertilizer and other agricultural products. These are burdens carried disproportionately by the agriculture community.

Using the study’s estimated acreage reduction of 5 to 7 million acres of corn as an example, the impact on fertilizer alone is significant. In that scenario, nitrogen demand impact is approximately 800,000 to 1 million tons of urea and UAN each, assuming that the direct application of ammonia volume remains constant. This represents about 15 percent of the urea market and 7% of the UAN market in the U.S., which will have a significant impact on fertilizer prices.

Further, the study shows that the economic losses throughout the biofuels value chain range from $105 billion to $185 billion, and cumulative federal, state, and local tax revenues losses range from $39 billion to $69 billion through 2050.

This study used POLYSYS and IMPLAN to derive the agricultural and economic impacts of this study.

Source: Agricultural Retailers Association

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Trevor Milton Explains Why Nikola May Be Better Than Tesla In Long Hauls

Marco Pinza — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 16:00:40 +0000

Cargo transportation is a matter of cost per mile. The lower it is, the better the trucking solution.

This is the idea that goes through the entire text Trevor Milton wrote on LinkedIn to explain why he thinks Nikola will offer a better solution than the Tesla Semi. For companies that deal with cargo transportation, his points will make a lot of sense.

Although it may seem that the text is a confrontation, the Nikola CEO reinforces many times that BEVs and FCEVs do not have to compete. Milton thinks they are complementary. It is just a matter of applying each of them to the application in which they can present more advantages.

With that in mind, he admits BEVs are more efficient but more suitable for transportation distances up to 300 miles. FCEVs are better for long hauls, at least with the current technology available for batteries. And that advantage comes in two aspects.

The first one is that fuel cell trucks are naturally lighter. That allows them to carry more cargo than an equivalent battery truck. If they can transport more stuff, their cost per mile already has a headstart.
The second is that the hydrogen stations on highways can have a lower energy cost than the charging stations in cities. We have already mentioned that the price of supercharging makes it dangerously close to that of filling up a gas tank. According to Milton, that happens because Tesla is not able to charge less due to the contracts it has with utilities. Would that be one of the reasons for Tesla to become a utility in the UK?

Nikola can avoid that with “PPA (Power Purchase Agreements) on main federal transmission lines.” The company has established these agreements for 20 years, making the price for hydrogen production fixed.

Milton says the current cost for 500 miles of range is $250 with green production of hydrogen. The Tesla Semi, with its 1.1 MWh battery pack, would require $297 to get a full charge at California prices. If these numbers are correct, the weight headstart that fuel cell trucks have becomes a huge advantage compared to a vehicle with a massive battery pack. But there’s more to this equation.

As Milton points out, current Tesla battery packs have to be replaced after about 500,000 miles. The one-million km Tesla Model S already had three battery packs. With such a lifespan for these components, a truck being fast charged twice a day would last only three years. That is likely why Tesla needed a one-million-mile battery: not for its cars, but rather for its truck.

Supposing the Semi already presents them, it will still have a limited lifespan and a high cost. Milton estimates the price of the 1.1 MWh battery pack in $122,000. To have lower energy prices, Nikola’s CEO says the chargers could buffer the grid with a similar battery pack, adding more $122,000 to the cost of the truck. Imagine replacing these battery packs every three years or, in case of the million-mile battery, every six years.

Fuel cells use hydrogen tanks that last 20 years, according to Milton. They would just demand “minimal rebuild costs after 20,000 hours” of about $5,000 to $10,000. That is equivalent to 2.3 years of continuous work.

These repairs are downtime for the trucks, but so is charging, even if it is possible to get to 80 percent of charge in one hour, for example. Considering these truck batteries are 11 times the biggest ones currently in electric cars, we would estimate more charging time than that. And time is money, especially with cargo transportation.

Battery packs would probably have longer lifespans if they could be charged slowly, as most Tesla owners know. So much so that many recommend only using the supercharging network for trips, never on a daily basis.

With that in mind, one could wonder if the Semi wouldn’t benefit from swappable batteries. If there is any swapping machine able to cope with 6 tons of the components the Semi will carry, that could make sense, but would also add cost to the operation.

Milton adds a final concern to this list: having a grid able to cope with a fleet of battery trucks. If each of these vehicles demands 1.1 MWh, a company with 100 trucks would need at least 110 MW each time all of them required a charge. If you add a Megapack to the buffer grid – as Nikola’s CEO suggested to lower energy costs – the energy demand may be even higher. Not precisely twice as much, as he suggested, but certainly more than that required solely for the trucks. In 2017, San Francisco had a 261 kWh usage, according to Statista.

As usual, Milton received a bunch of tweets from Tesla apologists who used passenger car information to try to confront his assessment. Instead of embarrassing themselves, they could have asked Tesla for more details on the Semi to refute Nikola’s CEO arguments properly. They could also have considered that diesel is the one to beat in the quest for cleaner transportation, not a company that proposes hydrogen as an alternative to plugs.

Source: Nikola Motor

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