01-18-2022, 04:42 PM
(01-18-2022, 04:08 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(01-18-2022, 03:41 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: 800W would be very low for a snowblower (just over 1 HP). See below for information on wattage of battery units.
Actually, the NEC and I believe our Canadian code matches it, limits the maximum continuous wattage of equipment on a 15A circuit to only 80% of the breakers capacity, so 1440W is the typical figure I hear.
But yeah, about 2 HP, rather anemic even from a low end gas blower.
Where as a high end battery unit could have 2 * 60 volt batteries * 7.5 amp hours * 5C discharge rate could easily draw up to 4500 Watts... or almost 6 HP which would be typical for a small engine in a snow blower. That being said, I couldn't find any figures on actual wattage for these units, so I have no idea how much of that capacity they are using.
Yes, 6 hp would translate to about 4500 W. But none of the units I saw show the rating of the motors so I really don't know how much current they draw. Somebody quoted about 20 minutes of runtime from a pair of Ryobi 40 V 6 Ah batteries (using a $1700 snowblower). If that's the case, it ran at roughly 18A x 40 V x 2 = 1440 W ... looks much like what you'd get from a standard house outlet ...
(Of course you can run 20A or 30A equipment from your house panel, too, but you'll need to have the wiring to match.)
Yes, like I said, I don't know what wattage the units I looked at were actually using, but there are a wide variety of units available with different battery system:
Here's the 1700 USD Toro unit I was quoting:
https://www.toro.com/en/homeowner/snow-b...-60v-39926
Even if we take the same current draw of 3C (I used 5C which is a typical maximum draw for LiIon batteries) the larger batteries will lead to a wattage of 2700 Watts or 3.6 HP.
Given Toro has another unit for 999 USD that's also at 60 watts, seems like the Ryobi system is significantly less powerful for the price. But obviously the blowers could be drawing less than maximum power.
I'm also not 100% sure how the power draw would be distributed, the motor should draw more power when under load, so it could be that the maximum power is significantly higher than 3C and 20 minutes is only the average runtime leading to an average draw of 3C.