Building & Construction Blog

Great, when what they really need to work on is getting the damn crappers to be more comfotable and/or spacious ... I bet st. gore is happy about this one... I can hear the gears clicking now, why can't they just make it a purely electric model and leave it plugged in ALL day long, hmmmmm wouldn't get much work with that now, huh? Well, I guess they could always roll out some sort of 480 power cord or something . Then it just wouldn't sound as cool...

Cheers

"Hybrid" heavy equipment. Geezh! New buzzword for old, old technology. Has been in use for decades. Komatsu is a johnie-come-lately as far as using electric motors powered by IC powered generators. And as for pure electric drive on a long extension cord. Check out some of the strip mining equipment. Some TV show did an episode on that about ten years ago and it wasn't new then. It was just a TV series about some of the worlds biggest monster machines. Purely electric machines; also been done long long ago. Somebody is jerking your chain if they are telling you its "new" technology. Worlds fastest trains are purely electric. Logan lake has one of their "hybrid" trucks as a tourist attraction. Its parked outside their Tourist Information booth. The truck is so old it is worn out and too old to repair. Tires are about 10 feet tall and you can walk underneath the truck.

Dont forget the largest cranes and excavators have been "hybrids" for half a century or more.

The big tower cranes run off of 480V. I have been in vegas where I saw a couple of funky tower cranes that looked like they were run off of a diesel type of motor (the difference in size being the thing that stood out to my eyes) typical tower cranes have a small lil' ol' cab. These? Well, they were really big cabs and looked almost like the old style truck cranes. The big trucks, as far as I know are all diesel, except for the HUGE trucks used in mining situations which are hybrids

Exactly, it is those huge trucks, and excavators used in mining and, some cranes and other machinery used on other very large project that run on hybrid systems. It is a similar system to that used in trains.

Check out diesel electric locomotives on howthingswork.com. Also realize that the fastest vehicles are becoming electric ones. They are the hot rods of the future. Then there are the huge mining vehicles being used to handle coal and shale oil.

Why use old technology, when new tech is better.

Take a look at the huge Letourneau loaders used in mining and forest products. They are hybrids (electrical wheel drivers) driven by a diesel generators. I think Letourneu is back ordered 2 years on these units.

Lots of huge mining equipment like shovel dippers and draglines are all electic.

I was told a retired navy sub mechanic has converted a sixteen wheeler (using spare navy componets) to electric drive using a 5 cyl turbo charged generator. Has anyone heard of this. He drives in Arizona and the US southwest.

I agree with most of the respondents so far in that we have been using diesel electric technology for many years, but I think they have missed the point here. What the "new" hybrid manufacturers are doing now is using the technique as a part of a wholistic package to use fuel more efficiently and reduce consumption for the same work output. The old diesel electric locomotives for example, did not use spare engine power to generate power into batteries to load share when demand increased. This would not have been possible then anyway because of the mass that would have been needed for the batteries compared with our modern alternatives that can store equivalent values in about 10% of the overall weight then needed.

Street cars and electric trains that used dynamic braking would feed power back into the power grid and in a way amounted to storing the energy in the utility grid. Hydraulic pressure accumulators have also been used as energy storage.

The battery is used as an accumulator to handle surges, but soft start motor controllers can be used to minimize the start surge tremendously. Overall these techniques have a very similar effect of minimizing the difference between peak demand and average load.

In a very technical and abstract sense, th eability to run purely on battery power for some period of time does define "hybrid" as distinct from Diesel-electric.

It seems to me that there are different goals that can be set. Your original comment was bemoaning the loss of huge engines. Is that right? We can have separate criteria for various goals.

1. Using the least fuel and money to get the job done.

2. Equipment lifespan.

3. Maintenance expense.

4. Potential to use the electrical output as a reserve energy source, and to sell back to the grid during peak needs.

5. Best performance, in terms of speed, maximum power etc.

I don't care for loud noise, and would much prefer quiet vehicles. My biggest criteria is overall expense over the years. Including purchase price, fuel cost, maintenance, lifespan etc.

Ronwagn wrote: I don't care for loud noise, and would much prefer quiet vehicles. My biggest criteria is overall expense over the years. Including purchase price, fuel cost, maintenance, lifespan etc.

REPLY

In that case we should agree on a realistic service life or life cycle period to determine life cycle costs. 3 years is probably a minimum but 30 years is maybe a bit too long for some things. Navy ships have about a 30 year life span as do some airliners. Some mining excavators seem to have a longer useful life span due to their unique application. On the other hand very high tech applications become obsolete in as little as a year. Do we need to eliminate the concept of planned obsolescence?

Heavy Duty Hybrids, may just be stepping stone for grunt machines which were first horse or oxen drawn, next steam then petrol followed by diesel. Hydraulics have already replaced much of the pure grunt being more efficient than mechanical levers. The next step will be active work faces. Like the Bulldozer blade being replaced by rows of rotating blades that breakup any thing in its path and throw it ahead instead of pushing it. Moving away from grunt to active tooling will allow other forms of power into the hydrid package and possibly turn the clock back using older power sources like steam using solar boilers. If oil prices go any higher alternative power forms become more cost effective. Sales of oxen have already increased in Thailand as farmers go back to the oxen drawn ploughs and tractor hire companies are going broke as their tractors lie idle. If this trend moves to the west the highways are going to get mighty slippy but drivers of the big rigs won't have to worry about speed cameras.

What?

The Department of the Environment should focus on mixing Water, Heritage and the Arts along with building and construction industry. Developing a sound mix of these instruments is a goal of the Department as it endeavours to work in partnership with the industry to achieve sustainable development.

Saimaxx - Wholesalers providing building, building and construction industry, suppliers of building materials, specialist distribution centre

Hmm, that is a bit crazy since it really is not the role of the government to make decisions about art or heritage. This is a good method to the decline of a 1st world civilization through tyrannical oversight/regulation in tastes. Unless there are some scientifically identifiable impacts or advantages to technology, the US EPA should not (and probably will not) get involved. The Concept of Art is something for architects, marketers and painters. The concept of heritage is a mechanism used by fringe extremist political groups, marketers, religious zealots and anthropologists, and probably should be avoided by all 1st world nations. (Thoughi do realize there are many 2nd and 3rd world nations with rapidly growing economies that still harbor some of these belief systems to maintain the racial/ethnic/religious hierarchies and social structures).

Huh???

Freightliner is building small and medium size hybrid trucks. They also developed a fuel cell to run the refrigeration of trailers while the truck is not moving. This will save a lot of diesel..

Hybrid trucks might be good, a huge improvement could come from the revamping of current commercial shipping on land to trains for long distance transportation, it is more enrgy efficient, and more localized truck transpoorting from centralize distribution hubs lying just outside of high traffic cities. Large volume deliveries can be shipped in by train and distributed, rather than 500 trucks from California to NY, use the 500 truck just around NY and 1 train. Trains are already hybrids, and they do not add to traffic congestion that causes huge amounts of pollution.