When it comes to battery-powered trains, the first thing the average person sees is a toy railway. However, technology has come a long way. Electric power is already commonplace in cars and trucks, and is being tested in airplanes, helicopters and container ships. Now, railway locomotives are also gradually planning to adopt battery power instead of diesel generators, which have been powering trains for more than a century.
Last week, Union Pacific Railroad came to an agreement to buy 20 battery-powered freight locomotives from Wabtec and Progress Rail. The deal, which has received the personal approval of President Biden, is worth more than $100 million. Battery electric locomotives will initially be used to sort cars at rail yards in California and Nebraska.
Also last year, Wabtec tested its FLXdrive locomotives on 18 runs between Barstow and Stockton, California. The tests were carried out as part of a $22 million grant from the California Air Resources Board. The battery electric locomotive was located between two traditional diesel locomotives and pulled up to 200 tons. Wabtec CTO Eric Gebhardt said the combination saves an average of 11 percent in fuel and emissions. Wabtec says the next-generation battery locomotive will nearly triple battery capacity to 7 megawatt-hours, nearly 100 times that of the Tesla Model 3. Gebhardt says this will help cut emissions by 30 percent.
Switching to battery power will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve local air quality. Diesel locomotives emit particulate matter and other toxic pollutants that are responsible for about 1,000 premature deaths and $6.5 billion in health care costs per year in the US alone. A spokesman for the California Air Resources Board said the replacement of diesel locomotives "will undoubtedly have a positive impact on health" and will be "a step in solving a long-standing issue of environmental justice for people living near railroad tracks."
Last fall, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the UCLA Institute for Environment and Sustainability predicted that switching from traditional diesel locomotives to battery-powered locomotives over 20 years could save $94 billion in fuel costs and also prevent pollutant emissions. substances into the air. Trains in the US are particularly well suited for this upgrade because most locomotives use a diesel generator to power the electric motors.
“If someone decides to do it, they can do it in a month,” says co-author Amol Fadke, who studies heavy-duty electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries. “All you have to do is add a car that has batteries on it.”
The startup, which emerged last month, has another idea: Parallel Systems wants to move goods using unmanned, battery-powered, autonomous rail vehicles. Trains will be collected automatically and move without a conductor, without a driver and without a whistle. If Parallel Systems is successful, fully autonomous self-driving vehicles could be on the rails before the roads.
Parallel Systems was founded in January 2020 by a group of ex-SpaceX executives and is largely still an idea. Parallel Systems CEO Matt Soul envisions platoons of railroad vehicles that resemble giant Roomba robots carrying 10 to 50 shipping containers, but so far this is based only on modeling and simulations. To date, the company has built only two railway vehicles. The second generation rail car is due to appear at the end of this year.
Soule says Parallel is trying to develop software that will work with existing railroads and include the necessary safety features. “We are not replacing trains,” he says. "It's about shifting more freight traffic to the railroad."
Each of these approaches promises a cleaner environment, lower rail fuel costs and fewer premature deaths from air pollution, but they lack the same thing that has hindered the spread of electric vehicles: a well-developed network of charging stations.Wabtech and BNSF Railway built the first battery electric locomotive charging station at the train depot in Stockton as part of a test run last year. It used 400 kilowatt wire charging, but Wabtec's later FLXdrive models would charge using a pantograph when the bracket touches a contact on top of the locomotive. A Wabtec spokesman says the company can provide mains charging, but charging from the top of a locomotive would be easier. Parallel Systems, in turn, is developing a charging pad that connects under rail vehicles and is placed between railroad tracks.
A study by the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Los Angeles, says that a significant part of the initial costs will come from the construction of charging stations. Freight trains typically travel 1,500 km or more, but every 250 km they make stops to change crews to recharge their batteries. One advantage of building charging stations for locomotives is that they don't have to be in cities, which will also help keep costs down.
Another possible advantage is the ability to charge batteries while heavy freight trains several miles long are rolling downhill by themselves. The Wabtec test compound covered almost 600 km last year. through California without recharging because regenerative braking charged the batteries to about 20 percent while driving downhill. The system is similar to the braking systems that recharge hybrid car batteries, Gebhardt says, noting that trains pull much more weight behind them. He believes regenerative braking could reduce the number of charging stations needed for battery electric locomotives.
The US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency last year launched the Locomotive Initiative, which collects models to predict costs, performance and greenhouse gas emissions for alternative energy locomotives operated by major railroads. Bob Lodo, program director, says the software can help cut fuel consumption and emissions from traditional locomotives. Over time, he said, coordinating more activity between ships, trucks and trains will be critical to decarbonizing the entire supply chain.
bbabo.Net