…you have not been through the power plant at Juniata. A steam tractor would be too new.
[(-D] . . .except that now it has a brand new smokestack . . . [%-)]
Actually, that’s one aspect of this critter that hasn’t been explored much. A few posts above I noted that recharging it at commercial electric rates would be roughly the equivalent of diesel fuel at $1.00 per gallon. But if you look at the ‘wholesale rates’ on the PJM grid in the middle of the night, they get really, really, cheap . . . maybe down around the equivalent of 25 cents per gallon, because both the electric grid system’s load and demand then is at daily minimums, and they have to do something with the power that is being generated by the ‘spinning reserve’ of the thermal = coal and nuclear power plants, and maybe the wind turbines, too. Even adding some ‘mark-up’ for the power company, it would be well worthwhile to plug-in NS 999 through a glorified timer and metering set-up so that it starts recharging at - say, 10:00 PM, through to and finishes by 6:00 AM each night. It could then head and and work all day, and repeat the next night. Depending on how much it saves that way - I haven’t run any numbers yet - it might even be able to entirely pay for the inevitable battery replacements after a couple hundred deep discharge-recharge cycles, etc.
Oh yeah - I see that I busted my math on the battery and motor amps calculation a few posts above - the 1,000 Amps range as a max. short-ter
Well, here’s one large truck battery of the type I was referring to - looks like it’s sealed, so no water levels to check or maintenance of that sort:
http://www.batterystore.com/Odyssey/PC2250.htm and
http://www.batterystore.com/Odyssey/OdysseyProducts.htm
- 2250 cranking amps
- 1225 cold cranking amps
- 240 minute reserve capacity at 25 amp load
- Capacity/20 Hour: 126.0Ah
List price per that website is $408.39 ea., so 1,080 of them would be $441,000 at retail. Note that I’ve seen posts which claim Odyssey is the actual manufacturer of the Sears ‘Die-Hard’ line of batteries, but I don’t have enough other info to be able to confirm or refute that either way.
For those who may be curious or interested in the details of the Juniata Back Shops’ power plant, see ‘‘The Juniata Shop Power Plant’’ - about 1 page - at:
http://www.altoonaworks.info/powerplant.html
From it: ‘’ . . . two Westinghouse 1875kw steam turbines capable of producing 90,000kw of electricity each 24 hour period . . .‘’
- Paul North.
With all the charging that will be needed with battery operated locos, cars, etc, for sure, we will need more coal fired power plants.
Rich
…and we’ll be lucky if they permit even new Natural Gas fired plants…