While there are no details yet that I could find, it looks like the big boys are trying to get into off system dc chargers. Be ironic if we cut down the last redwood tree to charge some Karen's EV so she could make her beauty parlor time. Volvo CE and Rolls-Royce develop wood-burning charger for off-grid EVs BioCharger At a million and a half each and a burn rate of up to 8 ton an hour. I think only Bill Gates will buy a couple of these for backups at his bug out palace. Would make one h*** of a wood gas generator though and I wonder if it could be scaled down to run a gas turbine off wood gas? Not cheap but fuel is renewable and availabe over long time. Haven't see Jerry put one of these in his stories yet, unless I missed it. TOM was more into tech though with his solar powered turbines.
Sort of interesting as I had so much slash from land thinning and clearing that I simply had to burn in a big burn pit because, what else can you do with it. Plus, that is not even talking about dead trees that one deals with yearly... It is an interesting concept but wondering how it would work in practice. For example, I would have had to make mountains of the slash all over the place and/or chip it all and store it for burning later. I suppose commercially, it might be more practical. Or, if I could burn the slash as normal and have a ready method to store all the power for future use, like a bottomless battery.
Maybe selling that slash might make a new niche for agriculture. Maybe that will generate a market to go clear out all the undergrowth in the forests making the wildfires so much worse. Maybe all the illegals will go in the forest looking for free slash to sell and Bigfoot and the Wendigos will get them. Shit, I need coffee.
The Brits burn wood to meet 'Green" goals, call it biomass. But the peon are not allowed wood stoves... Report: UK’s biomass electricity generation fell in 2022 | Biomass Magazine
There are still some wood burners out there. I've worked on a wood burner and a trash burner power plant in Syracuse, NY. (The trash burner made gem-like clinkers.) There's a huge biomass power Gen facility in SE Arkansas. I think it runs on sawmill waste. I never worked that job though.
Then, there are places that burn old tires for heat How Tire Derived Fuel is Cleaning Up (ecogreenequipment.com)
In case you missed it, here is a remarkable fact. UK emissions fell 5.7% in 2023 to the lowest since 1879 It's Not due to EV's though. More linked to the "Heat or Eat" dilemma I believe Bye-bye Carbon Beyond the many blips and dents what you can see on this chart, dear reader, is a textbook example on how peak carbon looks like. The UK has unwillingly provided us with a Petri-dish experiment on how the depletion of a finite energy resource puts an end to an era of economic, military and geo-strategic dominance together with rising living standards.
That's why we need nuclear power. Sure there's only 700 to 800 years worth of depleted uranium sitting above ground in cases in Idaho. Maybe fuison power will be viable before all that uranium is used up. If not there's always thorium.
If you want to keep lights on then then certainly. But you can't plant, fertilize and harvest food with it. I think that's the most pressing problem in the world today, it's behind to revolts in Haiti and many other third world nations. It was the motivation behind the mass migration that began into europe 10 years ago. The Green revolution using natural gas and oil for fertilizers and pesticides made starving to death unfashionable, but that's a topic for another thread. The choices made by the poor in the UK, placing food over electricity consumption tell me that using plant matter to make electricity, regardless of it's source, is counter productive.
Electricity from any source can make hydrogen from water, not an effective use of electricity or water imo. Hydrogen can be combined with nitrogen from the air in the harbor-bosch process with more electricity to provide brute force to make the hydrogen and nitrogen stick together, making ammonia. Electricity can also make nitric acid from air and water with the Birkeland–Eyde process. Ammonia plus nitric acid gives fertilizer. The Birkeland–Eyde process is so simple I did it when I was like 12 years old in my backyard. I don't see why planting and harvesting couldn't be done with a battery powered farm machinery, but that would be a waste of batteries and a poor matchup. As you typically see up to 4 different machines doing the plowing, drilling, spraying and harvesting for certain crops.
Like you say, it's not an efficient use of electricity. Down here they built a "Green" ammonia plant, but right beside the main gas pipeline feeding an export terminal. It's called GreenWashing, I doubt 5% of the ammonia and Hydrogen coming out of that plant will be derived from the solar arrays but it got massive government grants and kept the greenies happy. As for electric tractors and harvesters, well that's certainly possible, anything is. But what will the wheat cost? Twice as much, 4x? There is no shortage of bright ideas out there, just a shortage of practical replacements to how we do business now. Certainly the world fed itself before tractors but I believe 90% of the workforce was engaged in farming back then. At least for the nations that couldn't go plundering across the oceans and steal food from others. Germany uses some woodchip in it's green grid, but the chips mostly come from forests in the united states. It's part of the reason why their electricity is 100% higher than here. Now remove the diesel machines and oil fired ships and re-do the equation. Currently Bitcoin uses 1% of the Globes' electricity, the mining servers use more than the entire nation of Australia! And probably more electricity that all the Biomass production globally. See what we're up against? Everyone has their own pet project going and all they care about is their own profits. It's like used chip oil in diesel engines. A guy tried to tell me years ago that it was the solution. I asked him was there enough chip oil in the city to run the one million cars in the city. He just shook his head and walked away, clearly I didn't get it. Oh I got it alright, he wanted to proselyte someone and I wasn't buying his religion. The term Proselyte is often used to describe a person who has converted to another faith. In my case, from petrol to used chip oil. US judge halts government effort to monitor crypto mining energy use
