The United States with its largeness and rugged terrain makes railroad electrification a difficult proposition. High capital costs maintenance costs also make it difficult too. To get around these problem electricity could be transmitted wirelessly. Tesla Developed technology to do just that but unfortunately it was never fully developed. Wireless transmission if efficient enough could solve all of those barriers to entry. The problem with current technology is that it has larger transmission loss. The Removal of catenary friction would also allow higher speed passenger trains. I find it weird that the Morgans who owned a large number of Railroads would kill funding for it.
http://www.teslasociety.com/teslacoil.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil
Railroad to Freedom
I wouldn't say it wouldn't work, I don't know enough about it one way or another, and I'm certainly no electrical engineer.
But I can just hear the screams, and I do mean SCREAMS from the NIMBYS if they try to erect one of those things.
PS: I love Tesla coils! Always wanted one.
ontheBNSFTesla Developed technology to do just that but unfortunately it was never fully developed. Wireless transmission if efficient enough could solve all of those barriers to entry.
Tesla setups look pretty omni-directional to me. Also, way too much 'power' in for an (as yet) unquantifiable output at some remote location. Where the does the rest of the energy go? Hopefully not as a surge somewhere in nearby power transmission lines. I don't want that power bill. As a side note, (except indirectly by geothermal means) we've haven't been able to harvest useful power from the worlds largest power source - the molten iron core of the planet.
AFAIK a Testa coil produces a lot of electromagnetic interference across the spectrum. Not very nice to impact existing electronic devices and communication services.
A theoretical alternative (maglev aside) might be to transmit energy along the RR ROW only (riiiight) to a 'small', moving locomotive mounted receiver. Hmmm. Think microwave to light wavelengths. Besides the power conversion and moving target tracking challenges, the crew would have to be protected from that level of energy density (in kind of a reverse microwave oven - Faraday cage). BTW the U.S. military has been trying to do much the same thing with various high energy laser systems since the 1970s without much success. If they could propel a small missile with microwaves they might be interested, but when the missile disappears from the line of sight ...... thud.
O.K. now, where's young erikem with his detailed calculations ....
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One problem is that the electricity can cause damage, in fact severe damage, to animals including human beings. We don't feel high frequency electric waves but that doesn't mean they cannot harm us.
After seeing the opposition to an extra-high voltage (765KVA) transmission line that was built near here some years back, I can't begin to imagine what hassles and roadblocks getting such a system installed would have to overcome.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
With wireless transmission all that is needed is a sending station. It doesn't need towers to carry electric wires. So it might be quite easy to get the permission needed.
However, actually transmitting sufficient electric power through the air to power a train is easer said than done.
Broadcast radio stations send out multi-megawatts sometimes, but it goes in all directions, so by the time is has gone very far, there is barely enough to drive a small speaker in a non-power/non-amplified radio (think, Crystal Radio).
Confine it to a beam that does not spread out and you will cook any bird or other 'animal' that wanders into the path (Think microwave oven! Or why there is a switch on the landing gear of planes that shut off the nose radar when the weight of the plane is on the wheels. Don't wanna cook the guy directing the pilot where to park if the pilot forgets to turn off the radar when he has landed!)
I don't think wireless transmission of electrical power is a good idea!
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Semper Vaporo Broadcast radio stations send out multi-megawatts sometimes, but it goes in all directions, so by the time is has gone very far, there is barely enough to drive a small speaker in a non-power/non-amplified radio (think, Crystal Radio).
When I was a kid I used to make simple radios. One of them was designed to tune in two stations. You tuned in the strongest station in your area; that station simply powered the radio to recieve the station hou wanted to hear.
MikeF90 O.K. now, where's young erikem with his detailed calculations ....
Young??? I'm about the same age as Paul D North, Overmod and maybe a bit younger than Greyhounds...
There are a couple of different ways to transmit power sans wires. One is to use coupled high-Q resonators to make up for lack of coupling, but power transfer peters out when separation exceeds a few times the size of the largest resonator (near field). Keep in mind that the presence of large amounts of metal will do bad things for coupling. The other is use antennas to transmit power, good coupling can be maintained with dipole antennas up to about a quarter wavelength, much farther will require directional antennas and start looking like what MikeF90 was talking about. To get adequate power to the train, the power density of the beam would be approaching a MW/m^2, which would do a good job of cooking anything that got into the beam path - I'd rather deal with nuclear powered locomotives.
- Erik
Thanks to the EE's who can point out the folly of such a system. I would think that induction currents would be a real issue too.
If you had multiple beam paths, you might not want to let the beams cross.
CSSHEGEWISCH If you had multiple beam paths, you might not want to let the beams cross.
That'd make cooking lunch at places like Deshler and Fostoria really easy....
tree68That'd make cooking lunch at places like Deshler and Fostoria really easy....
Just be sure your lunch is the only thing you cook.
You know, I think the nexr power source for locomotives could be something none us us could imagine, anymore than Stevenson could imagine an electric locomotive replacing steam.
Maybe a super-sized super-efficient solar cell mounted on the roof of the locomotive sending power to the traction motors? Could happen. I probably won't live to see it, but who knows?
Well... lets see... the sun delivers about 1340 Watts of energy per square meter at the top of the atmosphere.
About 9 % is reflected and about 22% is absorbed by the atmosphere so only about 69% reaches the surface of the earth so you have available about 925 Watts per square meter to capture and turn into electricity.
Assume a 100% efficient conversion by some new fangled solar cell, (and unlike athletes that often claim to give 110%, solar cells cannot give more than 100%!).
So if your engine is covered in solar cells and the engine is, say... 20 meters long and 3 meters wide, then you have 60 Square Meters of solar cell available to make electricity.
That gives you 55,500 Watts of power to run your train when the sun is shining BRIGHTLY.
Uh... that is only about 75 Horsepower at NOON on a CLOUDLESS day.
I suppose that if you limit train travel to daylight hours, you might be able to haul a few people, SLOWLY to their destination. Assuming no tunnels, trees or clouds.
Presently solar cells are theoretically 33.7% efficient, so today you would only have about 26 Horsepower... at noon...
If we're allowing ourselves to dream that trains could be powered using 100 year-old, wishful thinking technolgy from a near-mad genious, why don't we just get some app for our I-phone that does the same thing?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy Siding If we're allowing ourselves to dream that trains could be powered using 100 year-old, wishful thinking technolgy from a near-mad genious, why don't we just get some app for our I-phone that does the same thing?
I'm absolutely positive that somebody is thinking of such an app right now!
Murphy Siding If we're allowing ourselves to dream that trains could be powered using 100 year-old, wishful thinking technolgy from a near-mad genius...
If we're allowing ourselves to dream that trains could be powered using 100 year-old, wishful thinking technolgy from a near-mad genius...
Tesla did give us AC - if Edison had his way, we'd be using DC in our houses...
The only way solar could power trains would be as a component of the supply for a catenary system.
tree68 Murphy Siding If we're allowing ourselves to dream that trains could be powered using 100 year-old, wishful thinking technolgy from a near-mad genius... Tesla did give us AC - if Edison had his way, we'd be using DC in our houses...
Ummm, no. Thomson-Houston and Westinghouse were doing AC lighting systems before Tesla's corroboration with Westinghouse. What Tesla did give us was polyphase AC and induction motors (though it took WEMCO's B.G. Lamme to get the design right.
Or charging battery powered locomotives. Solar power and wind power both need some sort of economical energy storage system before they can realistically provide a significant portion of the electric power production.
erikem Ummm, no. ... Solar power and wind power both need some sort of economical energy storage system before they can realistically provide a significant portion of the electric power production.
Ummm, no.
...
Solar power and wind power both need some sort of economical energy storage system before they can realistically provide a significant portion of the electric power production.
Can't always believe what a science-channel show on a specific individual tells you, I guess, which is understandable. Still, he had a piece of the action vs Edison's DC.
One method I recall seeing in the past for storage was a kinetic system - water was pumped up into a reservoir (lake sized) during excess power production, then released through turbines during high demand periods. Might be kinda hard to find suitable reservoir locations, though, among other issues...
MikeF90 Tesla setups look pretty omni-directional to me.
Tesla setups look pretty omni-directional to me.
The big 'dome' setups, like the one for Wardenclyffe, were highly directional. The dome is not the antenna -- there were (going to be) many small directional 'emitters' like the seeds in a dandelion 'puff'. A given emitter would not be brought 'live' until it had confirmed (via radio) that it was pointed at something actively receiving.
Of course, this was well in advance of Yagis, or digital signalling of the required precision, so how it would have worked in practice -- who can say.
I notice that the EEs are ignoring the 'scalar wave' part of the Tesla solution, which is supposed to be different from the old E x B electromagnetic radiation we former Class 1s knew and loved. There is also the 'telluric current' return path -- how that was supposed to produce high amperage RF current instead of just proportional RF slosh in and out of ground capacitance, I don't know, and how it was supposed to power aircraft and rubber-tired vehicles for any length of time could have been interesting in its own right.
The short answer to the 'failure' of broadcast power was wireless -- the use of which as a practical medium of communication would be short (pun intended!) And while we're at it, telegraph and telephone wiring will neatly collapse the e-field and produce... well, you know. Same for electrical power wiring. Or fence wiring. Etc. (Not difficult, is it, to figure out why Mr. Morgan chose not to finance this approach -- even before you take up the issue of metering the current draw rather than just the channel and direction...
Also, way too much 'power' in for an (as yet) unquantifiable output at some remote location. Where the does the rest of the energy go? Hopefully not as a surge somewhere in nearby power transmission lines.
"Surge" might be too gentle a word. Remember Tesla's was a world without delicate low-voltage semiconductors that give up the ship faster than the French on exposure to high stat voltage. Fortunately at the requisite frequencies it's unlikely you'll have high sustained current... but unfortunately, yes, there will be 1^2R losses, and yes, there are resonances in the same sorts of material that do poorly on exposure to high-wattage RF -- you know some of them from microwave oven mistakes...
As a side note, (except indirectly by geothermal means) we've haven't been able to harvest useful power from the worlds largest power source - the molten iron core of the planet.
Or, much more accessibly, the cold Rankine-cycle sink of deep ocean water, easily circulated a la GSHP for much less cost than cooling... Remember that pulling a vacuum is worth much greater proportional HP to an expander than higher initial pressure -- see the Titanic's engines if you need a graphic demonstration.
Core taps -- even mantle taps -- are much higher priced for the watt-equivalent than the idea may first appear. If you thought geothermal corrosion and scaling were fun ... imagine the fun putting a whole heat exchange setup (for molten salt or NaK or whatever as the circulating working fluid or transfer agent...) at the bottom of a hole that deep. And then keep that hole from shifting or closing up on you...
... not to mention what happens if you try to fix it.
But then there's always my favorite movie as an 8-year-old: "Thank God it's only a motion picture!"
That's only if you let the secondary spark across an air gap. Or out into free space like this.
I'd think that while there might be some harmonic interference from radiated power RF, proper antenna design would solve most of the emitting side, although I'm not sure about the antenna...
... or, as Bugs said to the audience -- "WHAT AM I DOOOOOOING?'
A theoretical alternative (maglev aside) might be to transmit energy along the RR ROW only (riiiight)...
Not as silly as it seems. Look at the 'grasshopper telegraph' (or the old PRR inductive phone setup) and imagine a different method -- directional focusing shields, perhaps? -- to optimize the 'sidelobe' coming off the wire so that the effective field is maximized in the space between emitter and receiver. Then have 'a plurality' of wire segments that are progressively energized as the locomotive advances...
Hmmm. Think microwave to light wavelengths.
Power light is do-able... but the cost is in the implementation. You would need a lateral array of something like VCSELs along the entire length of the 'wired' section, in parallel to get effective 'beam' spot density. Give the receiver an anamorphic lens and allow it to 'talk' to the laser array controller so only the lasers actually being received at the source are at full power. The modern generation of lasers can be upward of 40% efficient from AC supply to beam strength, so...
... but go back and look at the size of the required spot, and then start thinking about how you're going to use light, or IR, or whatever, to actually produce tractive power. Putting it gently, some of the physics does not scale...
Besides the power conversion and moving target tracking challenges, the crew would have to be protected from that level of energy density (in kind of a reverse microwave oven - Faraday cage).
The beam tracking was do-able even with 1917 relay-logic technology (if a little involved and very, very, very jitter- and vibration-intolerant!). Nowadays we should be able to keep the CEP acceptable even before doing adaptive beam shaping or the like to keep the effective spill minimized and power transfer... such as it is... maximized.
I am tempted to note that this is a really, really good way to be sure railroaders wear their properly-designed safety vests and other PPE. But I do not want enraged railroaders lining up down my driveway with deer rifles... 7-cartridge mag limit or not. (30-'06 is a puny caliber for sporting, but it works just fine through car doors... ;-] )
BTW the U.S. military has been trying to do much the same thing with various high energy laser systems since the 1970s without much success.
Oh, they have PLENTY of success -- just not particularly cost-effectively. And getting meaningful burnthrough on a convex mirrored surface that rotates as it is rising is really the major difficulty.
(One of my favorite April Fool's pranks involved a report that lasing at gamma-ray frequency was possible via hyperfine transition in Hf158 (I think it was) and grazing-incidence optics could then be used to focus the incident beam nicely on anything made of metal. (OK, folks... what's the principal joker in that deck?)
If they could propel a small missile with microwaves they might be interested, but when the missile disappears from the line of sight ...... thud.
You don't actually propel the missile with microwaves (or light, which is a bit better); you shine the beam to overcome transition temperature for a solid fuel (of some kind) whose combustion products are relatively transparent to the beam, or are emitted for thrust at some angle outward from the incident beam. Then you do that fancy two-way optical correction with MEMS etc. so that the beam stays collimated properly with altitude. (And use a spiral-scanned co-beam to keep 'water-vapor' blockage... or atmospheric density, for that matter... minimized around the path of the power beam. (If you are fancy enough, you can use lasers for vernier control, too, which makes the entire vehicle passive, difficult to detect, etc. etc. etc.)
You have the thing in line-of-sight to CONSIDERABLE altitude, the problem being not that it goes 'out of line of sight' but that for orbital insertion you have to get up to high speed 'sideways' (or it just falls back with a thud from an inverse forced orbit' situation). Some very tricky engineering is involved in doing that. But nothing particularly 'difficult' from a theoretical point of view.
Much more difficult is masking the beam trajectory, and emission point, from countermeasures. Same problem as with laser designators, just much much more obvious, and as you point out without much option to interrupt the power beam if under 'observation' or attack.
The big problem with beams coaxial with ROW is grade crossings. You would need multiple emitters for 'blocks', probably integrated with the signal-system logic. And some other stuff. Expect the very first roasted trespasser to ruin the economics for ever.
BTW: there are plenty of power frequencies that do not interfere dramatically with human tissue uptake or relative opacity/reflectance. We routinely tested the 11kW (17kW ERP @ 103.3MHz) output of our antenna by holding up an old fluorescent tube and watching its end light up. You only get the dramatic disappearing-Navy-tech result with very high powers at frequencies that interact with, say, H-O bonds...
RME
erikemUmmm, no. Thomson-Houston and Westinghouse were doing AC lighting systems before Tesla's corroboration with Westinghouse.
But Erik, Tesla's and Westinghouse's battles with Thomas Edison are well known. And when it comes to understanding electricity Edison just didn't.
John
When all said and done, wouldn't it be much simpler and cheaper to put up the catenary?
A far as radio frequency power transmission goes, anything with enough power to run a locomotive is likely to bust the E and B field limits of IEEE C95.1 standards for exposure to electromagnetic fields regardless of frequency. I can tell from personal experience about feeling the heating effects of the 63 MHz magnetic fields used in MRI.
As for Tesla coils, those are short electric dipole antennas, getting reasonable power transfer (with path loss less than say 20 dB) would require operating in the near field zone, which is typically given as the geometric mean of the wavelength and the size of the antenna. A 100m tall Tesla coil operating at 30 kHz (10,000 m wavelength) would have a near field zone of 1,000m. A larger near field zone can be had by going to lower frequencies, but the receiving antenna will need to be large to remain efficient.
"Scalar energy" sounds suspiciously like the stored energy around a resonator.
OK, I was joking when I mentioned a "super-sized" solar cell, I'm sure everyone knows that.
But I'm going to be just a tad serious here. I don't know what the future may hold, but there just may be another power source just waiting to be discovered that's unthought of now, and possibly right under everyone's noses.
Look at it this way: you boil water and you get steam, but how many centuries did it take before someone figured out how to use that steam? Hot air/ smoke rises, but how long did it take before someone figured out how to trap hot air in a balloon and fly with it? And aviation? The Romans could have built gliders if they knew the simple principles involved in flight. See where I'm going here?
Steam? OK, I know about Hero of Alexandria in the Classical Times, but his steam engine was a gimmick that no one knew what to do with.
Anyway, there's no telling what the mind of man will come up with, or what God in His wisdom will reveal to man in His own good time,
How about this: A locomotive with solar cells and a recycled PT tender behind as a battery! Don't that get your juices flowing?
But how about lineside solar collectors set at optimum angles to the prevailing sunlight with the power being collected and routed directly to the overhead catenary wires, keeping the system in readiness for a train at all times. Excess generation could be resold to local power companies and industries along the right of way. This would be a simple extension of railroad investments in pipelines and fiber optic cable using their existing routes. Just drive through Calfornia's central valley and Arizona and Nevada's deserts. Lots of sunshine and almost no opposition to its use.
Firelock76Look at it this way: you boil water and you get steam, but how many centuries did it take before someone figured out how to use that steam?
Thomas Savery invented his pumping engine about 1698. As far as I know that was the first practical use of a steam engine.
Firelock76 OK, I was joking when I mentioned a "super-sized" solar cell, I'm sure everyone knows that. But I'm going to be just a tad serious here. I don't know what the future may hold, but there just may be another power source just waiting to be discovered that's unthought of now, and possibly right under everyone's noses. Look at it this way: you boil water and you get steam, but how many centuries did it take before someone figured out how to use that steam? Hot air/ smoke rises, but how long did it take before someone figured out how to trap hot air in a balloon and fly with it? And aviation? The Romans could have built gliders if they knew the simple principles involved in flight. See where I'm going here? Steam? OK, I know about Hero of Alexandria in the Classical Times, but his steam engine was a gimmick that no one knew what to do with. Anyway, there's no telling what the mind of man will come up with, or what God in His wisdom will reveal to man in His own good time, How about this: A locomotive with solar cells and a recycled PT tender behind as a battery! Don't that get your juices flowing?
What is a "recycled PT tender"?
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
carnej1What is a "recycled PT tender"?
He means a great big long centipede tender, like the ones behind the NYC Niagaras. PT is the NYC acronym for 'pedestal tender' (meaning the construction where multiple tender axles work in a rigid frame, similar in principle to a reciprocating-locomotive frame, with controlled lateral for better curving).
Think of the tenders currently on 844 and 3985 (or 4014 et al.)
John WR Firelock76Look at it this way: you boil water and you get steam, but how many centuries did it take before someone figured out how to use that steam? Thomas Savery invented his pumping engine about 1698. As far as I know that was the first practical use of a steam engine.
But let's be honest: those aren't steam engines, they're atmospheric engines. Steam only does the displacing of the atmosphere and then intentionally is made to condense, so the atmosphere does the actual work. Pressure steam needed to wait a while, for materials and fabrication technology to come up to snuff.
In any case, interestingly enough, part of the retardation of acceptance of steam as a prime mover is that the internal-combustion principle was recognized much earlier, and explicitly as not involving a messy Rankine cycle to generate pressure on pistons to do work. That principle, of course, is the use of gunpowder. And yes, it's perfectly practical to build a slow-speed engine using gunpowder or something like it as the fuel. No problem with exhaust, for example, or boiler technology, or supplying a separate working fluid other than combustion gas...
... piston seal and 'rod angularity' were addressed, interestingly enough, precisely as if the piston was a cannonball, with its 'mating surface' to the cylinder spherical like a cannonball, and the sealing accomplished with wadding (of appropriately fireproof construction!) that is just wrapped around the spherical piston. I think I recall the thing being set up inline, like an organ, with the cylinders working on a recognizable crankshaft, like one of the Arabic ganged water pumps in reverse, so there is time to 'reload' each cylinder after it fires.
Steam was a backward step from this, and I find it notable that as soon as a few comparatively slight details about fuel, materials, cylinder cooling, and ignition were addressed -- noe of which couldn't be done with 16th-Century materials! -- the IC motor became a thoroughly practical device with advantages over most steam power even of advanced form.
(I never thought an HPS degree would prove so useful, and a source of so much fun!)
Firelock76 Look at it this way: you boil water and you get steam, but how many centuries did it take before someone figured out how to use that steam? Hot air/ smoke rises, but how long did it take before someone figured out how to trap hot air in a balloon and fly with it? And aviation? The Romans could have built gliders if they knew the simple principles involved in flight. See where I'm going here?
But ... let us not also forget that it's highly likely that innovation 'stops' just at a level where steam locomotives -- or, in fact, railroad locomotives as we now use them, or even rail vehicles as Kneiling would have used them -- are the technology to utilize it.
High-efficiency fuel combustion ( as in fuel cells or MHD) won't apply to external combustion as cost-effectively as to other types of power (road vehicles and powerplants respectively). Better chemical sources are applied to batteries ... and we are already at the point where the pitfalls of energy storage in combustion fuel are beginning to be evident in battery chemistry ... laptop fires and Dreamliner surprise syndrome, anyone?
Reminds me a bit of a science fiction story -- I believe it was by 'Doc' Smith -- where some fellow invented an invisible field that he could use to hold the buck and the die of a riveting arrangement perfectly steady, so that one man could drive and set his own rivets. If I had access to THAT kind of field technology... I don't think I would be driving rivets with it. George O. Smith had some very similar themes, but he usually understood how they would be 'transformatory' in unanticipated ways ... and told stories about them.
As a case in point: Most of the available alternate-fuel technology I've seen has one of two problems: either it's best applied to make synthetic fuel that is better optimized as an 'energy carrier', or it becomes massively unstable under 'anomalous condtions' (curse you, TATP!!!) If you concentrate too hard on Procrustean rail use of these things, you will get into the aluminum-beryllium lightweight buggy whip/titanium hypersonic yaw-string situation faster than you may realize.
Small-scale economies: better personal vehicles
Large-scale power release: better electricity, including electricity as a process 'fuel' for synthesis equipment.
Large-scale fast power release: better aircraft or SSTO launch systems.
The immediate use of thousands or millions of nanostructured lithium-ion batteries for rail transportation has been with us for almost a decade. GE has a documented report on construction of an 'optimized' hybrid road-locomotive battery (it's in a free DVD you can obtain from one of the CFD software companies, Comsol). It isn't *that* likely that a new principle... say, zero-point or vacuum energy ... will be JUST at the scale that optimizes its use for propelling long, loading-gage-restricted consists with low rolling resistance.
Let us not forget that this is from a culture that discovered the idea of cybernetic machinery, described accurately what the technology could do... and then dismissed it as stupid, because they already had speaking tools that could do any then-conceivable job of 'thinking' more cost-effectively.
When I was about 12, I had the bright idea that if the Greeks or Romans had discovered steam power, it would have revolutionized sea warfare. Boy, did I have a lot to learn!
This is very true. I can only hope that God is a railfan.
There is no such switch on the nose gear of an airplane. I use my radar on the ground all the time to observe the weather in my departure path. There is a switch on some aircraft to put the transponder in standby on the ground to avoid interference. You are correct in that we don't take the radar out of standby until well clear of ground personnel
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