Solar powered tractor (Swedish article)

25 days ago by Nickelalloy to c/solarpunk

Came across two guys who had rebuilt an old tractor and made it run on electrical power and solar panels while acting autonomus. Article on Swedish

VibeSurgeon 6 points 25 days ago

It's underpowered for the task it needs to solve, and the value of the solar panels on top of the roof seems somewhat questionable.

Fun project regardless

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Gladaed 6 points 25 days ago

Great when you don't think about it. Don't work so good when you do.

A typical machine uses much more power than that. And it's usually expensive hence you shouldn't idle.

Also solar panels can deliver power everyday flexibly to every consumer. Just use some batteries, their so cheap.

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farmgineer 5 points 25 days ago

My solar-powered motion lights haven't even been able to fully charge in months here, sometimes dying fully. There's no way my tractor could survive that (I also think the battery weight required would make it unusable in my fields as it would be more prone to sinking than my current diesel one). Hopefully we get there some day.

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Nickelalloy 6 points 25 days ago

Most likley! This one is more like " Solar powered Arduino connected to a tractor performs tasks"

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lime 3 points 25 days ago

wait i've seen this tractor in real life... weird to have ih pop up here years after the fact.

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Nickelalloy 1 point 25 days ago

Huh, look at that! Tha erticle is quite old and only found it due to it was menetioned in a smal magazine about self reliance and other hippie things (magazine is called "Åter") and is also in Swedish, surprisingly good!

Anyway, how come you saw it? Did you talk to the people behind it?

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lime 2 points 25 days ago

i've passed by it while bikinga few times. it's about a km NE of the local ostrich farm.

haven't talked to them sadly, never even seen it move. i always thought the solar panels were for charging the 12v battery or something.

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Nickelalloy 2 points 25 days ago

Cool, seems to be a side project for them, I think i read one of them was a teacher at some school nearby.

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solo 3 points 25 days ago

Looks like there are also open source solar tractors! (hm I think I'll post this one to the EV community)

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A404 1 point 22 days ago

we cant rely on motorized agriculture anymore, even if we somehow converted all tractors to solar, we would eventually run out of soil

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eleitl 1 point 25 days ago

Agrivoltaics and a tractor with trolleys. Diesel backup when you urgently need something done and the sun doesnt care.

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Nickelalloy 2 points 25 days ago

Yep, I recently read about another home project where they added the electeical drive train in line with the petrol drive train and could run it in woth old engine still fitted.

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