Utility, wind farmer reach deal: No upgrade required for wind farm

British Columbia Bomb Cyclone disrupts coastal travel with severe wind gusts, heavy rainfall, widespread power outages, ferry cancellations, flooding, and landslides across Vancouver Island, straining emergency services and transport networks during the early holiday season.

Key Points

A rapidly intensifying storm hitting B.C.'s coast, causing damaging winds, heavy rain, power outages, and ferry delays.

✅ Wind gusts over 100 km/h and well above normal rainfall

✅ Power outages, flooded roads, and downed trees across the coast

✅ Ferry cancellations isolating communities and delaying supplies

A powerful storm, dubbed a "bomb cyclone," recently struck the British Columbia coast, wreaking havoc across the region. This intense weather system led to widespread disruptions, including power outages affecting tens of thousands of residents and the cancellation of ferry services, crucial for travel between coastal communities. The bomb cyclone is characterized by a rapid drop in pressure, resulting in extremely strong winds and heavy rainfall. These conditions caused significant damage, particularly along the coast and on Vancouver Island, where flooding and landslides led to fallen trees blocking roads, further complicating recovery efforts.

The storm's ferocity was especially felt in coastal areas, where wind gusts reached over 100 km/h, and rainfall totals were well above normal. The Vancouver region, already susceptible to storms during the winter months, faced dangerous conditions as power lines were downed, and transportation networks struggled to stay operational. Emergency services were stretched thin, responding to multiple weather-related incidents, including fallen trees, damaged infrastructure, and local flooding.

The ferry cancellations further isolated communities, especially those dependent on these services for essential supplies and travel. With many ferry routes out of service, residents had to rely on alternative transportation methods, which were often limited. The storm's timing, close to the start of the holiday season, also created additional challenges for those trying to make travel arrangements for family visits and other festive activities.

As cleanup efforts got underway, authorities warned that recovery would take time, particularly due to the volume of downed trees and debris. Crews worked to restore power and clear roads, while local governments urged people to stay indoors and avoid unnecessary travel, and BC Hydro's winter payment plan provided billing relief during outages. For those without power, the storm brought cold temperatures, and record electricity demand in 2021 showed how cold snaps strain the grid, making it crucial for families to find warmth and supplies.

In the aftermath of the bomb cyclone, experts highlighted the increasing frequency of such extreme weather events, driven in part by climate change and prolonged drought across the province. With the potential for more intense storms in the future, the region must be better prepared for these rapid weather shifts. Authorities are now focused on bolstering infrastructure to withstand such events, as all-time high demand has strained the grid recently, and improving early warning systems to give communities more time to prepare.

In the coming weeks, as British Columbia continues to recover, lessons learned from this storm will inform future responses to similar weather systems. For now, residents are advised to remain vigilant and prepared for any additional weather challenges, with recent blizzard and extreme cold in Alberta illustrating how conditions can deteriorate quickly.

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Sub-Saharan Africa Energy Access faces critical deficits; SDG7, clean energy finance, off-grid solar, and microgrids drive electrification for health, education, and economy amid World Bank and IEA efforts to expand reliable, affordable power.

Key Points

Reliable, affordable power in sub-Saharan Africa via renewables, off-grid solar, and SDG7-led electrification.

✅ SDG7 targets universal, modern energy access by 2030

✅ Off-grid solar and microgrids boost rural electrification

✅ Health, education, and business depend on reliable power

Sub-Saharan Africa has an electricity problem. While the world as a whole has made great strides when it comes to providing access to electricity and moving toward universal electricity access worldwide (the world average is now 90 per cent with access, up from 83 per cent in 2010), southern and western African states still lag far behind.

According to Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report, produced by a consortium of organisations including the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and the World Health Organization, 759 million people were without electricity in 2019 and threequarters of them were based in sub-Saharan Africa. At just seven per cent, South Sudan had the lowest access figures; Chad, Burundi and Malawi were only marginally higher. What’s more, due to a combination of factors, the situation is getting worse. In total, the region’s access deficit increased from 556 million people in 2010 to 570 million people in 2019.

These days, being without electricity has an impact on every sphere of life. The Covid-19 pandemic only served to put this into sharper relief. Intermittent electricity meant vaccination doses that rely on cold storage were impossible to deliver and, as more than 70 per cent of the health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to reliable electricity, the problem was vast. But even without a global pandemic, having no power stymies opportunity in every field, from education to economics.

French photojournalist Pascal Maitre, who has spent much of his career writing about sub-Saharan Africa, wanted to document the problems faced by people in areas with no electricity. He thought particularly carefully about the location for his project. ‘First, I was thinking I could take images in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,’ he says. ‘But then I thought that if you chose a place that has war, it’s logical that electricity won’t really work. So, instead, I wanted to find a place that is quite stable. I decided to go to Benin, where they have a democracy. It is a good example of a country that’s not in really bad shape but where they still have this problem. Also, I didn’t want to go to a place that is very remote, where it is normal not to have good service. So I decided to go to a place around 50 kilometres from the capital that you can get to by road.’

Maitre visited several villages in the region, as well as making trips to Chad and Senegal, and encountered the full range of limitations engendered by the power shortage. From teachers struggling to conduct lessons in the dark to midwives forced to work with only the weak light from a phone, the situation was clearly unacceptable. ‘People were very, very, very upset,’ he says. ‘I conducted a lot of interviews in different villages and lack of electricity touches education, economy, business, security and also emigration, because people have to move to big cities or maybe to Europe to get jobs.’

Where once the situation might have been accepted as the norm, people today are fully aware of the ways in which they are held back by the lack of power. As Maitre remembers: ‘A guy said to me one day, “Do you think it is normal that last time my wife delivered a baby, the midwife had to hold her phone between her teeth in order to see what she was doing?” You feel very frustrated.’ He adds that the fact that most people now have mobile phones only highlights the hardship. ‘Before, maybe it was not so frustrating. But now, most of these people have cellphones. The cellphone company puts antennae everywhere so the phones work, but people cannot recharge their phones. They have to go to the market, where someone will come with a generator to recharge.’

Governments and global organisations are very aware of the problem across the world as a whole. Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) – one of the 17 goals set out in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly – was designed to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy by 2030, underscoring the push for clean, affordable and sustainable electricity for all by 2030. As part of this goal, international financial flows to developing countries in support of clean energy reached US$17 billion in 2018. As a result, some areas have seen huge improvement. According to the Energy Progress Report, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, the advance of electrification has been enough to approach universal access. By 2019, in Western Asia and North Africa, and Central and South Asia, 94 and 95 per cent of the population respectively had access to electricity.

But these statistics only serve to emphasise just how bad the situation is in sub-Saharan Africa, where electricity systems are unlikely to go green this decade according to several analyses. As the report states: ‘While renewable energy has demonstrated remarkable resilience during the pandemic, the unfortunate fact is that gains in energy access throughout Africa are being reversed: the number of people lacking access to electricity is set to increase in 2020, making basic electricity services unaffordable for up to 30 million people who had previously enjoyed access.’

The small silver lining is that if the situation is dealt with properly, the region could build a renewable-energy system from the ground up, rather than having to undergo the costly and complex transitions underway in developed countries. In rural areas, small-scale or off-grid renewable systems (mostly solar) are expected to play an important role, as highlighted by a recent IRENA report on decarbonisation, in increasing access. In fact, solar panels are already used in many areas. In 2019, 105 million people had access to off-grid solar solutions, up from 85 million in 2016, and almost half lived in sub-Saharan Africa, with 17 million in Kenya and eight million in Ethiopia.

Rachel Kyte is currently serving as the 14th dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the USA, but her CV is long. She was previously CEO of the UN-affiliated Sustainable Energy for All (SeforALL), as well as the World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, leading the run-up to the Paris Agreement. According to her, a focus on renewables is absolutely essential, both for wider efforts to tackle climate change, with some advocating a fossil fuel lockdown to drive a climate revolution, but also for the people of sub-Saharan Africa. ‘The fossil fuel industry has said it will just extend the centralised fossil-fuel power systems that we have today to reach these people,’ she says.

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Latvia Astravets electricity imports weigh AST purchases from the Belarusian nuclear plant, impacting the Baltic grid, Lithuania market, energy security, and cross-border trading as Latvia seeks to mitigate supply risks and stabilize power flows.

Key Points

Proposed AST purchases of power from Belarus's Astravets plant to bolster Baltic grid supply via Lithuania.

✅ AST evaluates imports to mitigate supply risk

✅ Energy could enter Lithuania via existing trading route

✅ Debate centers on nuclear safety and Baltic grid impacts

Latvia’s electricity transmission system operator, AST, is looking at the possibility of purchasing electricity from the soon-to-be completed Belarusian nuclear power plant in Astravets, at a time when Ukraine's electricity exports have resumed in the region, long criticised by the Lithuanian government, Belsat TV has reported.

According to the Latvian media, the Latvian government is seeking to mitigate the risk of a possible drop in electricity supplies amid price spikes in Ireland highlighting dispatchable power concerns, given that energy trading between the Baltic states and third parties is currently carried out only through the Belarusian-Lithuanian border, including Latvian imports from Lithuania.

If AST starts importing electricity from the Belarusian plant to Latvia, in a pattern similar to Georgia's electricity imports during peak demand, the energy is expected to enter the Lithuanian market as well.

Such cross-border flows also mirror responses to Central Asia's electricity shortages seen recently.

The Lithuanian government has repeatedly criticised the nuclear power over national security and environmental safety concerns, as well as a number of emergencies that took place during construction, particularly as Europe is losing nuclear power and confronting energy security challenges.

Debates over infrastructure and safety have also intensified by projects like power lines to reactivate Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine.

The first Astravets reactor, which is being built close to the Lithuanian border in the Hrodno region, is expected to be operational by the end of 2019, a year that saw Belgium's nuclear exports rise across Europe.

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Texas Power Grid Reliability faces ERCOT blackouts and winter storm risks; solutions span weatherization, natural gas coordination, PUC-ERCOT reform, capacity market signals, demand response, grid batteries, and geothermal to maintain resilient electricity supply.

Key Points

Texas Power Grid Reliability is ERCOT's ability to keep electricity flowing during extreme weather and demand spikes.

✅ Weatherize power plants and gas supply to prevent freeze-offs

✅ Merge PUC and Railroad Commission for end-to-end oversight

✅ Pay for firm capacity, demand response, and grid storage

The blackouts in February shined a light on the fragile infrastructure that supports modern life. More and more, every task in life requires electricity, and no one is in charge of making sure Texans have enough.

Of the 4.5 million Texans who lost power last winter, many of them also lost heat and at least 100 froze to death. Wi-Fi stopped working and phones soon lost their charges, making it harder for people to get help, find someplace warm to go or to check in on loved ones.

In some places pipes froze, and people couldn’t get water to drink or flush after power and water failures disrupted systems, and low water pressure left some health care facilities unable to properly care for patients. Many folks looking for gasoline were out of luck; pumps run on electricity.

But rather than scouting for ways to use less electricity, we keep plugging in more things. Automatic faucets and toilets, security systems and locks. Now we want to plug in our cars, so that if the grid goes down, we have to hope our Teslas have enough juice to get to Oklahoma.

The February freeze illuminated two problems with electricity sufficiency. First, power plants had mechanical failures, triggering outages for days. But also, Texans demanded a lot more electricity than usual as heaters kicked on because of the cold. The ugly truth is, the Texas power grid probably couldn’t have generated enough electricity to meet demand, even if the plants kept whirring. And that is what should chill us now.

The stories of the people who died because the electricity went out during the freeze are difficult to read. A paletero and cotton-candy vendor well known in Old East Dallas, Leobardo Torres Sánchez, was found dead in his armchair, bundled in quilts beside two heaters that had no power.

Arnulfo Escalante Lopez, 41, and Jose Anguiano Torres, 28, died from carbon monoxide poisoning after using a gas-powered generator to heat their apartment in Garland.

Pramod Bhattarai, 23, a college student from Nepal, died from carbon monoxide after using a charcoal grill to heat his home in Houston, according to news reports. And Loan Le, 75; Olivia Nguyen, 11; Edison Nguyen, 8; and Colette Nguyen, 5, died in Sugar Land after losing control of a fire they started in the fireplace to keep warm.

A 65-year-old San Antonio man with esophageal cancer died after power outages cut off supply from his oxygen machine. And local Abilene media reported that a man died in a local hospital when a loss of water pressure prevented staff from treating him.

Gloria Jones of Hillsboro, 87, was living by herself, healthy and social. According to the Houston Chronicle, as the cold weather descended, she told her friends and family she was fine. But when her children checked on her after she didn’t answer her phone, they found her on the floor beside her bed. Hospital workers tried to warm her, but they soon pronounced her dead.

Officials said in July that 210 people died because of the freezing weather, including those who died in car crashes and other weather-related causes, but that figure will be updated. The Department of State Health Services said most of those deaths were due to hypothermia.

Policy recommendation: Weatherize power plants and fuel suppliers

Texas could have avoided those deaths if power plants had worked properly. It’s mechanically possible to generate electricity in freezing temperatures; the Swedes and Finns have electricity in winter. But preparing equipment for the winter costs money, and now that the Public Utility Commission set new requirements for plant owners to weatherize equipment, we expect better reliability.

The PUC officials certainly expect better performance. Chairman Peter Lake earlier this month promised: “We go into this winter knowing that because of all these efforts the lights will stay on.”

Yet, there’s no matching requirement to weatherize key fuel supplies for natural gas-fired power plants. While the PUC and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas were busy this year coming up with standards and enforcement processes, the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas production, was not.

The Railroad Commission is working to ensure that natural gas producers who supply power plants have filed the proper paperwork so that they do not lose electricity in a blackout, rendering them unable to provide vital fuel. But weatherization regulations will not happen for some months, not in time for this winter.

Policy recommendation: Combine the state’s Public Utility Commission and Railroad Commission into one energy agency

Electricity and natural gas regulators came to realize the importance of natural gas suppliers communicating their electricity needs with the PUC to avoid getting cut off when the fuel is needed the most. Not last year; they realized this ten years ago, when the same thing happened and triggered a day of rolling outages.

Why did it take a decade for the companies regulated by one agency to get their paperwork in order with a separate agency? It makes more sense for a single agency to regulate the entire energy process, from wellhead to lightbulb. (Or well-to-wheel, as cars increasingly need electricity, too.)

Over the years, various legislative sunset commissions have recommended combining the agencies, with different governance suggestions, none of which passed the Legislature. We urge lawmakers in 2023 to take up the idea in earnest, hammer out the governance details, and make sure the resulting agency has the heft and resources to regulate energy in a way that keeps the industry healthy and holds it accountable.

Policy recommendation: Incentivize building more power plants

Regardless, if energy companies in February had operated their equipment exactly right, the lights likely would have still gone out. Perhaps for a shorter period, perhaps in a more shared way, allowing people to keep homes above freezing and phones charged between rolling blackouts. But Texas was heading for trouble.

Before the winter freeze, ERCOT anticipated Texas would have 74,000 MW of power generation capacity for the winter of 2021. That’s less than the usual summer fleet as some plants go down for maintenance in the winter, but sufficient to meet their wildest predictions of winter electricity demand. The power generation on hand for the winter would have met the historic record winter demand, at 65,918 MW. Even in ERCOT’s planning scenario with extreme generator failures, the grid had enough capacity.

But during the second week of February, as weather forecasts became more dire, grid operators began rapidly hiking their estimates of electricity demand. On Valentine’s Day, ERCOT estimated demand would rise to 75,573 MW in the coming week.

Clearly that is more demand than all of Texas’ winter power generation fleet of 74,000 MW could handle. Demand never reached that level because ERCOT turned off service to millions of customers when power plants failed.

This raises questions about whether the Texas grid has enough power plants to remain resilient as climate change brings more frequent bouts of extreme weather and blackout risks across the U.S. Or if we have enough power to grow, as more people and companies, more homes and businesses and manufacturing plants, move to Texas.

What a shame if the Texas Miracle, our robust and growing economy, died because we ran out of electricity.

This is no exaggeration. In November, ERCOT released its seasonal assessment of whether Texas will have enough electricity resources for the coming winter. If weather is normal, yes, Texas will be in good shape. But if extreme weather again pushes Texas to use an inordinate amount of electricity for heat, and if wind and solar output are low, there won’t be enough. In that scenario, even if power plants mostly continue to operate properly, we should brace for outages.

Further, there are few investors planning to build more power plants in Texas, other than solar and wind. Renewable plants have many good qualities, but reliability isn’t one of them. Some investors are building grid-scale batteries, a technology that promises to add reliability to the grid.

How come power plant developers aren’t building more generators, especially with flat electricity demand in many markets today?

Policy recommendation: Incentivize reliability

The Texas electrical grid, independent of the rest of the U.S., operates as a competitive market. No regulator plans a power plant; investors choose to build plants based on expectations of profit.

How it works is, power generators offer their electricity into the market at the price of their choosing. ERCOT accepts the lowest bids first, working up to higher bids as demand for power increases in the course of a day.

The idea is that Texans always get the lowest possible price, and if prices rise high, investors will build more power plants. Basic supply and demand. When the market was first set up, this worked pretty well, because the big, reliable baseload generators, the coal and nuclear industries, were the cheapest to operate and bid their power at prices that kept them online all the time. The more agile natural gas-fired plants ramped up and down to meet demand minute-by-minute, at higher prices.

Renewable energy disrupts the market in ways that are great, generating cheap, clean power that has forced some high-polluting coal plants to mothball. But the disruption also undermines reliability. Wind and solar plants are the cheapest and quickest power generation to build and they have the lowest operating cost, allowing them to bid very low prices into the power market. Wind tends to blow hardest in West Texas at night, so the abundance of wind turbines has pushed many of those old baseload plants out of the market.

That’s how markets work, and we’re not crying for coal plant operators. But ERCOT has to figure out how to operate the market differently to keep the lights on.

The PUC announced a slew of electricity market reforms last week to address this very problem, including new to market pricing and an emergency reliability service for ERCOT to contract for more back-up power. These changes cost money, but failing to make any changes could cost more lives.

Texas became the No. 1 wind state thanks in part to a smart renewable energy credit system that created financial incentives to erect wind turbines. But those credits mean that sometimes at night, wind generators bid electricity into the market at negative prices, because they will make money off of the renewable energy credits.

It’s time for the Legislature to review the credit program to determine if it’s still needed, of a similar program could be added to incentivize reliability. The market-based program worked better than anyone could have expected to produce clean energy. Why not use this approach to create what we need now: clean and reliable energy?

We were pleased that PUC commissioners discussed last week an idea that would create a market for reliable power generation capacity by adding requirements that power market participants meet a standard of reliability guarantees.

A market for reliable electricity capacity will cost more, and we hope regulators keep the requirements as modest as possible. Renewable requirements were modest, but turned out to be powerful in a competitive market.

We expect a reliability program to be flexible enough that entrepreneurs can participate with new technology, such as batteries or geothermal energy or something that hasn’t been invented yet, rather than just old reliable fossil fuels.

We also welcome the PUC’s review of pricing rules for the market. Commissioners intend for a new pricing formula to offer early price signals of pending scarcity, to allow time for industrial customers to reduce consumption or suppliers to ramp up. This is intriguing, but we hope the final implementation keeps market interventions at a minimum.

We witnessed in February a scenario in which extremely high prices on the power market did nothing to attract more electricity into the market. Power plants broke down; there was no way to generate more power, no matter how high market prices went. So the PUC was silly to intervene in the market and keep prices artificially high; the outcome was billions of dollars of debt and a proposed electricity market bailout that electricity customers will end up paying.

Nor did this PUC pricing intervention prompt power generation developers to say: “I tell you what, let’s build more plants in Texas.” In the next few years, ERCOT can expect more solar power generation to come online, but little else.

Natural gas plant operators have told the PUC that market price signals show that a new plant wouldn’t be profitable. Natural gas plants are cheaper and faster to build than nuclear reactors; if those developers cannot figure out how to make money, then the prospect of a new nuclear reactor in Texas is a fantasy, even setting aside the environmental and political opposition.

Policy proposal: Use less energy

Politicians like to imagine that technology will solve our energy problem. But the quickest, cheapest, cleanest solution to all of our energy problems is to use less. Investing some federal infrastructure money to make homes more energy efficient would cut energy use, and could help homes retain heat in an emergency.

The PUC’s plan to offer more incentives for major power users to reduce demand in a grid emergency is a good idea. Bravo – next let’s take this benefit to the masses.

Upgrading building codes to require efficiency for office buildings and apartments can help, and might have prevented the frozen pipes in so many multifamily housing units that left people without water.

When North Texas power-line utility Oncor invested in smart grid technology in past decades, part of the promise was to help users reduce demand when electricity prices rise or in emergencies. A review and upgrade of the smart technology could allow more customers to benefit from discounts in exchange for turning things off when electricity supply is tight.

Problem is, we seem to be going in the opposite direction as consumers. Forget turning off the TV and unplugging the coffee machine as we leave the house each morning; now everything is always-on and always connected to Wi-Fi. Our appliances, electronics and the services that operate them can text us when anything interesting happens, like the laundry finishes or somebody opens the patio door or the first season of Murder She Wrote is available for streaming.

As Texans plug in electric vehicles, we will need even more power generation capacity. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin estimated that if every Texan switched to an electric vehicle, demand for electricity would rise about 30%.

Texans will need to think realistically and rationally about where that electricity is going to come from. Before we march toward a utopian vision of an all-electric world, we need to make sure we have enough electricity.

Getting this right is a matter of life and death for each of one us and for Texas.

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Electric tractors are surging, with battery-powered models, grid-tethered JD GridCON, and solar-charged designs delivering autonomous guidance, high efficiency, low maintenance, quiet operation, robust PTO compatibility, and durability for sustainable, precision agriculture.

Key Points

Electric tractors use battery or grid power to run implements with high efficiency, low noise, and minimal maintenance.

✅ Battery, grid-tethered, or solar-charged power options

✅ Lower operating costs, reduced noise, fewer moving parts

✅ Autonomous guidance, PTO compatibility, and quick charging

Car and truck manufacturers are falling off the fossil fuel bandwagon in droves and jumping on the electric train.

Now add tractors to that list.

Every month, another e-tractor announcement comes across our desks. Environmental factors drive this trend, along with energy efficiency, lower maintenance, lower noise level and motor longevity, and even autonomous weed-zapping robots are emerging.

Let’s start with the Big Daddy of them all, the 400 horsepower JD GridCON. This tractor is not a hybrid and it has no hassle with batteries. The 300 kilowatts of power come to the GridCON through a 1,000 metre extension cord connected to the grid, including virtual power plants or an off-field generator. A reel on the tractor rolls the cable in and out. The cable is guided by a robotic arm to prevent the tractor from running over it.

It uses a 700 volt DC bus for electric power distribution onboard and for auxiliary implements. It uses a cooling infrastructure for off-board electrical use. Total efficiency of the drive train is around 85 percent. A 100 kilowatt electric motor runs the IVT transmission. There’s an auxiliary outlet for implements powered by an electric motor up to 200 kW.

GridCON autonomously follows prescribed routes in the field at speeds up to 12 m.p.h., leveraging concepts similar to fleet management solutions for coordination. It can also be guided manually with a remote control when manoeuvring the tractor to enter a field. Empty weight is 8.5 tonnes, which is about the same as a 6195R but with double the power. Deere engineers say it will save about 50 percent in operating costs compared to battery powered tractors.

Solectrac
Two California-built all-battery powered tractors are finally in full production. While the biggest is only 40 horsepower, these are serious tractors that may foretell the future of farm equipment.

The all-electric 40 h.p. eUtility tractor is based on a 1950s Ford built in India. Solectrac is able to buy the bare tractor without an engine, so it can create a brand new electric tractor with no used components for North American customers. One tractor has already been sold to a farmer in Ontario. | Solectrac photo
The tractors are built by Solectrac, owned by inventor Steve Heckeroth, who has been doing electric conversions on cars, trucks, race cars and tractors for 25 years. He said there are three main reasons to take electric tractors seriously: simplicity, energy efficiency and longevity.

“The electric motor has only one moving part, unlike small diesel engines, which have over 300 moving parts,” Heckeroth said, adding that Solectrac tractors are not halfway compromise hybrids but true electric machines that get their power from the sun or the grid, particularly in hydro-rich regions like Manitoba where clean electricity is abundant, whichever is closest.

Neither tractor uses hydraulics. Instead, Heckeroth uses electric linear actuators. The ones he installs provide 1,000 pounds of dynamic load and 3,000 lb. static loads. He uses linear actuators because they are 20 times more efficient than hydraulics.

The eUtility and eFarmer are two-wheel drive only, but engineers are working on compact four-wheel drive electric tractors. Each tractor carries a price tag of US$40,000. Because production numbers are still limited, both tractors are available on a first to deposit basis. One e-tractor has already been sold and delivered to a farmer in Ontario.

The eUtility is a 40 h.p. yard tractor that accepts all Category 1, 540 r.p.m. power take-off implements on the rear three-point hitch, except those requiring hydraulics. An optional hydraulic pump can be installed for $3,000 for legacy implements that require hydraulics. For that price, a dedicated electricity believer might instead consider converting the implement to electric.

“The eUtility is actually a converted new 1950s Ford tractor made in a factory in India that was taken over after the British were kicked out in 1948,” Heckeroth said.

“I am able to buy only the parts I need and then add the motor, controller and batteries. I had to go to India because it’s one of the few places that still makes geared transmissions. These transmissions work the best for electric tractors. Gear reduction is necessary to keep the motor in the most efficient range of about 2,000 r.p.m. It has four gears with a high and low range, which covers everything from creep to 25 m.p.h.

On his eUtility, a single 30 kWh onboard battery pack provides five to eight hours of run time, depending on loads. It can carry two battery packs. The Level 2 quick charge gives an 80 percent charge for one pack in three hours. Two packs can receive a full charge overnight with support from home batteries like Powerwall for load management.

The integrated battery management system protects the batteries during charging and discharging, while backup fuel cell chargers can keep storage healthy in remote deployments. Batteries are expected to last about 10 years, depending on the number of operating cycles and depth of discharge.

Exchangeable battery packs are available to keep the tractor running through the full work day. These smaller 20 kWh packs can be mounted on the rear hitch to balance the weight of the optional front loader or carried in the optional front loader to balance the weight of heavy implements mounted on the rear hitch.

The second tractor is the 20 kWh eFarmer, which features high visibility for row crop farms at a fraction of the cost of diesel fuel tractors. The 30 h.p. eFarmer is basically just a tube frame with the necessary components attached. A simple joystick controls steering, speed and brakes.

Harvest
Introduced to the North American public this spring by Motivo Engineering in California, the Harvest tractor is simply a big battery on wheels. The complex electrical system takes power in through a variety of renewable energy sources, such as solar panels with smart solar inverters enabling optimized PV integration, water wheels, wind turbines or even intermittent electrical grids. It stores electrical power on-board and delivers it when and where required, putting power out to a large number of electrical tools and farm implements. It operates in AC or DC modes.

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Lockdown Electricity Demand Trends reveal later mornings, weaker afternoons, and delayed peaks as WFH, streaming, and video conferencing reshape energy demand curves, grid forecasting, and residential electricity usage across Europe, New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.

Key Points

Shifts in power use during lockdowns: later ramps, weaker afternoons, and higher, delayed evening peaks.

✅ Morning ramp starts later; midday demand dips

✅ Evening peak shifts 1-2 hours; higher late-night usage

✅ WFH and streaming raise residential load; industrial demand falls

Life in lockdown means getting up late, staying up till midnight and slacking off in the afternoons.

That’s what power market data in Europe show in the places where restrictions on activity have led to a widespread shift in daily routines of hundreds of millions of people.

It’s a similar story wherever lockdowns bite. In New York City electricity use has fallen as much as 18% from normal times at 8am. Tokyo and three nearby prefectures had a 5% drop in power use during weekdays after Japan declared a state of emergency on April 7, according to Tesla Asia Pacific, an energy forecaster.

Italy’s experience shows the trend most clearly since the curbs started there on March 5, before any other European country. Data from the grid operator Terna SpA gives a taste of what other places are also now starting to report, with global daily demand dips observed in many markets as well.

1. People are sleeping later

With no commute to the office people can sleep longer. Normally, electricity demand began to pick up between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Now in Germany, it’s clear coffee machines don’t go on until between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., said Simon Rathjen, founder of the trading company MFT Energy A/S.

Germany, France and Italy -- which between them make up almost two thirds of the euro-zone economy -- all have furlough measures that allow workers to receive a salary while temporarily suspended from their jobs. The U.K. also has a support package. Many of these workers will be getting up later.

"Now I have quite a relaxed start to the morning,” said David Freeman, an analyst in financial services from London. "I don’t get up until about half an hour before I need to start work.”

2. Less productive afternoons

There is a deeper dip in electricity use in the afternoons. Previously, power use rose between 2pm and 5pm. Now it dips as people head out for a walk or some air, according to UK demand data from National Grid Plc

It’s "as though we are living through a month of Sundays”, said Iain Staffell, senior lecturer in sustainable energy at Imperial College London.

3. Evenings in

From 6pm electricity use begins to rise steeply as people finish work and start chores. Restrictions like work and home schooling that prevent much daytime TV watching lifts in the early evening. This following chart for Germany shows the evening peak for power use coming during later hours.

The evening is when electricity use is highest, with most people confined to their homes. Netflix Inc reported a record 15.8 million paid subscribers – almost double the figure forecast by Wall Street analysts. Video-streaming services like Netflix and YouTube have found a captive audience. The new Disney+ service surpassed 50 million subscribers in just five months, a faster pace than predicted.

Internet traffic is skyrocketing, with a surge in bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming services and Zoom. This may mean that monthly broadband consumption of as much as 600 gigabytes, about 35% higher than before, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

In Singapore, electricity use has dropped off significantly since the country’s "circuit-breaker” efforts to keep people at home began April 7. Electricity use has fallen and stayed low during the day. But late at night is a different story, as power demand fell sharply immediately after the lockdown began, it has steadily crept back in the past two weeks, perhaps a sign that Tiger King and The Last Dance have been finding late-night fans in the city state.

In Ottawa, COVID-19 closures made it seem as if the city had fallen off the electricity grid, according to local reports.

4. Staying up late

We’re going to bed later too. Demand doesn’t start to drop off until 10pm to 12am, at least an hour later than before.

"My children are definitely going to bed later,” said Liz Stevens, a teaching assistant from London. "Our whole routine is out the window.”

It’s challenging for those that need to predict behaviour – power grids and electricity traders. Forecasting is based on historical data, and there isn’t anything to go into the models gauging use now.

The closest we can get is looking at big events like football World Championships when people are all sitting down at the same time, according to Rathjen at MFT.

"Forecasting demand right now is very tricky,” said Chris Kimmett, director of power grids at Reactive Technologies Ltd. "A global pandemic is uncharted territory."

What normal looks like when the crisis passes is also an open question. Different countries are set to unravel their measures in their own ways, and global power demand has already surged above pre-pandemic levels in some analyses, with Germany and Austria loosening restrictions first and Italy remaining under tight control. Some changes may be permanent, with both workers and employers becoming more comfortable with working from home.

5. Different sectors consume more

In China, which is further along recovering from the pandemic than Europe or the US, the sharp contraction in overall power output masks a shift in daily routines.

Eating habits have changed. Restaurants are expanding delivery and even offering grocery services as the preference for dining at home persists. Household electricity consumption in China probably increased from activities such as cooking and heating, according to IHS Markit, which said that residential demand rose by 2.4% in the first two months as people stayed in.

The increase in technology use also drove China’s power demand from the telecom and web-service sectors to rise by 27%, the consultancy said.

Overall, China power demand in the first quarter of the year fell 6.5% from the same period in 2019 to 1.57 trillion kilowatt-hours, China’s National Energy Administration said last week. Industry uses about 70% of the country’s electricity, while the commercial sector and households account for 14% each. – Bloomberg

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