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[quote user="Railway Man"] [quote user="Bucyrus"] I have a simple question:    If all the railroads in the U.S. were electrified today, how much power would that require compared to the amount of electric power actually consumed today.  Power to run all railroads today = _____% of power actually consumed today. [/quote]  ALL the railroads?  But quite a few of them already are electric, particularly transit.  How about we just take the Class 1 freight operations.  Data for 2008 is not yet available, so I will use 2007: <OL> <LI>Class 1 freight consumed 566.9 trillion BTU <LI>The U.S. generated 4,156,745 thousand megawatt-hours <LI>That equates to 14,183 trillion BTU equivalent <LI>That equates to 3.99 percent.</LI></OL> In other words, to electrify all freight operations of all U.S. Class 1 railroads, it would require a generation increase of 4 percent.  That kind of spare capacity exists, but often it is not in the right place at the right time. The problem is mostly one of transmission, storage, and reliability.  In some cases it may be less expensive to build new generation capacity at a specific location than to build new transmission lines, but that is not a "lack of generation capacity" problem per se. (Note -- adding in all the passenger operations, including intercity, commuter, and transit, increases the BTU consumption from 566.9 trillion to 657.5 trillion) RWM [/quote] Thanks RWM.  I just wanted to get a feel for how much new generation would be required.  The 4% figure seems like it could be squeezed out of existing production, especially if we are entering an era of reducing consumption in the non-rail sector.
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