It looks like battery powered automobiles will soon be gaining a significant share of the market and Elon Musk is now pushing electric trucks and airplanes. So how far away is current battery technology from a battery powered locomotive? Maybe in a light rail application or industrial switcher first?
http://nssustainability.com/2014_sustainability_report/environmental_performance/a_battery_powered_alternative.html
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
Let's jump ahead now to 2017, where is NS999 today? Still serving the NS or stored out-of-server. If stored, does anyone know it didn't work? Would like to read the lessons learned from NS999. Otherwise an impressive locomotive.
Read the article about / interview with Gibson Barbee in the middle to end of the article at the link provided by zugmann above.
“I would say that we underestimated the difficulties involved,” Barbee said. “We felt we could do it in a couple of years, and we were overly optimistic.”
- PDN.
seppburgh2Let's jump ahead now to 2017, where is NS999 today? Still serving the NS or stored out-of-server. If stored, does anyone know it didn't work? Would like to read the lessons learned from NS999. Otherwise an impressive locomotive.
The problem with any battery powered transportation vehicle is refueling and range. Fossil fueled vehicles (cars, trucks, locomotives) can go from empty to full in 10-15 minutes or less. Recharging of batteries from empty to full takes hours.
In the racing world thre is a international class known as FE (Formula Electric) the pit stop for these cars involves the drivers exiting their 1st car, getting belted back into their 2nd car and continuing the race. To me, the use of two cars is abhorent - if you race a car/driver combination its one car and one driver. Until this competition develops 'replaceable battery packs', to my mind it will be a joke competition.
The same applies to battery locomotives, until a battery pack that can be changed in a time equivalent to what is required for a diesel fueled locomotive with equivalent operating range/time, such battery locomotives will be considered toys.
If you are promoting a new technology to replace a existing technology, the new has to out perform the old in virtually all measures - that is what diesels electrics did to replace steam.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
One possible application for a batteries in road service would be a road slug ballasted with batteries. The batteries would be used to assist in climbing grades and also to store energy via regenerative braking when descending.
Another way is to use replaceable battery packs, technically doable but economoically not practical even with Elon Musk's claim of $125/kW-hr batteries from his factory.
On the face of it, it sounds like a no-brainer - plenty of space on the average loco for the batteries, etc, and so on.
As has been noted, the devil is in the details.
The idea of peak demand resource makes sense, if there's a place where such a demand exists (and I'm sure there is). One might think that small yards, where crews may work only a single, regular daily shift, leaving time to recharge the batteries between shifts, would be an application. If the batteries will last an entire shift. Electric cars are only good for a couple hundred miles at a swat.
But, given the current state of the technology, it sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
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...
The recharging problem for battery locomotives might be solved by putting the battery pack inside a detachable module. The module could be quickly swapped out when the batteries were running low. This method would reduce locomotive down-time and because battery charging time would be decoupled from the times trains needed to run allow railways to take advantage of off-peak electricity prices.
Batteries might be useful as an auxiliary power source on diesel locomotives, for two reasons:
(1) Regeneration - to absorb energy when the train decelerates, and use the stored energy to boost the power from the locomotive's engine when the train is got moving again;
(2) To even out troughs and peaks in power demand. Diesel engines are most fuel-efficient when working at 80+% of their capacity. This lies behind the idea of the genset locomotive where two or three smaller engines take the place of one large one, engines being used as far as possible only when they will be working flat-out. A locomotive with one large diesel engine and a battery power-pack might achieve the same fuel savings with greater reliability.
One part of battery propulsion that is often overlooked by many people is that it only relocates the source of pollution from the exhaust pipe of the vehicle to the smokestack of the power plant.
Quick recharge (or lack thereof) may long be a major weakness of battery technology. Battery packs are not light so having a couple of fully-charged packs in your garage so you can change out the discharged battery pack in your car may not be a practical solution for the average motorist.
I should note that when I said there was plenty of room, I was thinking in terms of the locomotive not having a prime mover, or perhaps just a genset for charging purposes.
For battery operated cars to make inroads as real transportation they cannot rely on 'home charging' as the sole means of obtaining 'fuel'. Just as there are gas stations all over the country, there will have to be an extensive network of 'battery pack' stations, where you drive in swap out your nearly fully discharged battery pack and have a fully charged battery pack installed - all in 10-15 minutes while you make natures own pit stop and then you are on your way.
Until you can take a battery operated vehicle anywhere you want, any time you want without fear of not being able to obtain 'fuel' whenever you need it, the battery operated vehicle continue to be a toy. An expensive toy, but a toy nevertheless.
CSSHEGEWISCH One part of battery propulsion that is often overlooked by many people is that it only relocates the source of pollution from the exhaust pipe of the vehicle to the smokestack of the power plant. Quick recharge (or lack thereof) may long be a major weakness of battery technology. Battery packs are not light so having a couple of fully-charged packs in your garage so you can change out the discharged battery pack in your car may not be a practical solution for the average motorist.
Johnny
IslandMan The recharging problem for battery locomotives might be solved by putting the battery pack inside a detachable module. The module could be quickly swapped out when the batteries were running low. This method would reduce locomotive down-time and because battery charging time would be decoupled from the times trains needed to run allow railways to take advantage of off-peak electricity prices. Batteries might be useful as an auxiliary power source on diesel locomotives, for two reasons: (1) Regeneration - to absorb energy when the train decelerates, and use the stored energy to boost the power from the locomotive's engine when the train is got moving again; (2) To even out troughs and peaks in power demand. Diesel engines are most fuel-efficient when working at 80+% of their capacity. This lies behind the idea of the genset locomotive where two or three smaller engines take the place of one large one, engines being used as far as possible only when they will be working flat-out. A locomotive with one large diesel engine and a battery power-pack might achieve the same fuel savings with greater reliability.
Your #1 and #2 reasons are the ones that drive the economics, I think. Just need diesel engine to provide for steady state.
I think a great application would be commuter service. You wouldn't need to store huge amounts of energy, so storage device wouldn't have to be massive.
If the RR is electrified, then the opportunity for temporarily storing the energy from braking can be wayside. I think some transit lines are trying this. You can always use regenerative braking and not have to worry about a matching load occuring at the same moment.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
DeggestyPaul, your first paragraph hits on a matter which has absolutely been ignored by many people; they seem to be totally oblivious of the fact that usable electricity does not fall from the sky.
But, I just plug a cord into the wall, and there it is!
Far too many people go through life not realizing where the products they consume come from.
I would suppose, though, that with the drive toward "green" power sources (solar, wind, each with their own environmental issues), that an electric vehicle becomes a little "greener."
Here we go again. People here need to review modern battery and charging technologies in the context of locomotives accelerating and decelerating heavy trains before they'll come up with anything that makes sense outside of bull sessions.
One major problem is charge and discharge rate. This as I recall was one of the characteristics GE well understood when they started developing their hybrid-locomotive battery chemistry -- I don't think you can still find the tech material from GE any more, but the COMSOL multiphysics people (that's the package GE used in initial development) had it on their 'demo CD' (and yes, it's a shining example of development methodology using multiphysics tools!)
Without comparatively sophisticated electronics, the gradual falloff in chemical voltage as the cells tend toward exhaustion leads to higher demand current, and ohmic heating; this is one of the key Tesla technologies that are now supposedly 'open source' as far as patent IP goes.
Personally, I see very, very little practical use for a pure-BEV locomotive if there is not convenient, fast recharge available near-on-demand for it. "Swapping out" several tons of battery, no matter how clean you can get the make/break of the contacts and the arrangement of slide rails, counterweights, shock bumpers and so forth, is an idiotic idea to keep any locomotive in service. So you either need a continuous or intermittent contact source -- catenary, third-rail, GE-like contact 'buttons' that rise up to meet a shoe inside an insulated housing, etc. -- or some kind of charging system, ideally for the green crowd one that uses a renewable source.
Either way: (1) well-to-wheel economic analyses have been conducted in very good detail, with very good methodology, and it is not rocket science to adapt one to a particular 'use case' for a locomotive or rail service; and (2) the source of the power is primarily economic in nature ... with the various aspects of politics and political regulation being reduced to economic terms, in the sensible analysis of item (1), to get what's most cost-effective given the long-term function of the locomotive for satisfactory railroad purposes, a point that so many of the wack battery locomotive proposals seem to forget about in their rush for carbon or 'eco-friendly' street credits or whatever.
I look at the issue of the 'battery fairy' the same way I look at anything else that involves 'carrier energy'. If the 'grid' can provide me a horsepower equivalent at less than the cost of diesel in a genset, net of all cost, apples to apples, and specifically including political incentives both positive and negative, then I don't particularly care if it comes from 'dirty old coal' or somebody's boondoggle gas-turbine peaking plants. If I am railroading, I need a reliable locomotive that does what I expect without damaging itself -- kicking cars all day, perhaps -- and any battery-equipped technology, primary or 'hybrid', needs to provide that at best net cost to me.
A few thoughts (of many) on this:
It's a 'one-of' experimental/ bench-test prototype, not a production model.
I believe no one has mentioned lithium ion - or other exotic batteries - with faster or 'rapid' recharging times.
Even here in 'backwards' Allentown, PA (cue that infamous Billy Joel song), the local Red Robin restaurant has half-a dozen recharging stations - I've even seen 2 in use at once. (Don't yet have photo of an Amish horse-and-buggy going by, though - zugmann, can you help me out ?).
It's designed for switching service - not mainline hauls - even I don't think a battery locomotive will ever be good for that.
A stationary coal fired power plant can have better pollution controls (for different pollutions, granted) than a mobile engine.
And a battery doesn't care where it's power comes from - a diesel has no choice.
Or when. Overnight spot rates in the PJM grid (where NS 999 is) are sometimes almost zero - no kidding. So the off-peak recharging noted above would be very cheap power.
The "battery change" can be done quickly and easily: Put a 2nd set of batteries on another stripped-down frame & wheels (from a car or loco). When the battery loco's set of batteries are depleted, just couple onto that frame, connect the air and 2 jumper cables, and go off again. This can probably be done even faster than refilling a fuel tank. When that one is used up, drop it and pick up another; repeat as often as necessary. The used-up ones can sit on a side track and recharge as long as needed, provided there's enough on hand to keep the loco working as it's needed. Variations - tow the 2nd battery car around right from the beginning for longer range/ running time from the start, make the battery car a slug, etc. - can be imagined and implemented.
The short-time overload rating has been mentioned. Here's another example: 0 to 60 MPH in 2.2755 seconds by a Tesla S P100D sedan in Motor Trend tests in February (WSJ Weekend, Sat./Sun. Feb. 25-26, 2017, pgs, A-1 and A-5). That's better than 1-G horizontal acceleration. For reasons of physics (electric motor and tire traction), that's unlikely to ever be beat by an internal combustion engine.
Switching service is of like kind. Rapid starts are good. Frequent slow-downs are opportunities to recharge by regenerative braking. Even a Prius can do that (15+ years now) - and they rarely need new brake pads or rotors. Since the rolling resistance (air + friction) of rail equipment is low, most of the energy expended in starting can be recovered in braking. Maybe Ed Blysard can comment on how such a locomotive would - or wouldn't - work in his switching job when they're 'kicking' a string of cars to sort them into several yard tracks.
BaltACD For battery operated cars to make inroads as real transportation they cannot rely on 'home charging' as the sole means of obtaining 'fuel'. Just as there are gas stations all over the country, there will have to be an extensive network of 'battery pack' stations, where you drive in swap out your nearly fully discharged battery pack and have a fully charged battery pack installed - all in 10-15 minutes while you make natures own pit stop and then you are on your way. Until you can take a battery operated vehicle anywhere you want, any time you want without fear of not being able to obtain 'fuel' whenever you need it, the battery operated vehicle continue to be a toy. An expensive toy, but a toy nevertheless. BaltACD: good points and “solution” i.e. “filling station” = already charged batteries to drop in place. Lots of physics (versus dreaming) involved in the matter of kicking cars with the battery operated loco. Then too it is interesting to think about a dynamic brake as recharging rather than grid to load and heat for braking. i.e. Prius car. Physics and real world are a lot different than “sounds good, should work” mentality endmrw0302171302
BaltACD: good points and “solution” i.e. “filling station” = already charged batteries to drop in place. Lots of physics (versus dreaming) involved in the matter of kicking cars with the battery operated loco. Then too it is interesting to think about a dynamic brake as recharging rather than grid to load and heat for braking. i.e. Prius car. Physics and real world are a lot different than “sounds good, should work” mentality endmrw0302171302
BaltACD For battery operated cars to make inroads as real transportation they cannot rely on 'home charging' as the sole means of obtaining 'fuel'. Just as there are gas stations all over the country, there will have to be an extensive network of 'battery pack' stations, where you drive in swap out your nearly fully discharged battery pack and have a fully charged battery pack installed - all in 10-15 minutes while you make natures own pit stop and then you are on your way. Until you can take a battery operated vehicle anywhere you want, any time you want without fear of not being able to obtain 'fuel' whenever you need it, the battery operated vehicle continue to be a toy. An expensive toy, but a toy nevertheless.
But you're ignoring the fact many people have a commuter/run around car. For that, a battery-powered car is most likely fine. Then you can also have the SUV or minivan if you want to take longer trips.
Or heck, if you don't travel a lot, you can always just rent something gas-powered. An electric car does not have to fill every single need for it to be viable. I mean, lots of people have motorcycles that spend the winter in a garage.
zugmann I mean, lots of people have motorcycles that spend the winter in a garage.
Thus the posers that trailer their bikes down to Daytona for Bike Week. Real bikers ride!
BaltACDThus the posers that trailer their bikes down to Daytona for Bike Week. Real bikers ride!
I happened to be in Myrtle Beach one year for Bike Week (I was there for a totally unrelated event, but it was good entertainment...) and saw quite a few bikes arrive by airplane....
zugmannBut you're ignoring the fact many people have a commuter/run around car. . . . An electric car does not have to fill every single need for it to be viable. . . .
zugmannBut you're ignoring the fact many people have a commuter/run around car. For that, a battery-powered car is most likely fine. Then you can also have the SUV or minivan if you want to take longer trips.
In 2014 when I had to have my broken arm surgically repaired, one of my co-workers who has a Nissan Leaf electric played chauffer to get me to the surgical center and back home. He lives about 25 mile from my house and the surgical center was another 25 miles from my house. When he dropped me at home after the procedure he was 'sweating' being able to get home on his remaining charge - he made it.
His normal 16 miles to work and 16 mile back home were well within the range of his 'normal' use for the vehicle. He does have another vehicle.
That "sweating" is also known as "range anxiety".
The coming generation of EVs is supposed to have ranges in the 100+ miles range; Teslas are supposed to have over 200 miles even now.
Paul_D_North_JrThat "sweating" is also known as "range anxiety". The coming generation of EVs is supposed to have ranges in the 100+ miles range; Teslas are supposed to have over 200 miles even now. - PDN.
I've had 'range axniety' at O dark thirty towing the race car in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately a Open gas station shortly came into view.
BaltACDI've had 'range axniety' at O dark thirty towing the race car in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately a Open gas station shortly came into view.
Driving down the road, in your own world, when the "low gas" light pings on and you realize that you meant to stop for gas at that station you passed 20 miles ago...
tree68One might think that small yards, where crews may work only a single, regular daily shift, leaving time to recharge the batteries between shifts, would be an application. If the batteries will last an entire shift.
Sounds like the modern replacement for the Fireless steam locomotive.
"+1" - I thought the same thing.
Hopefully the darned shiny thing's battery has enough dwell left to move it into the shop before it dies.
(IAIS' brand new locomotive shop has the issue of no ceiling vent(s) and relies on the engine getting in the shop on its own battery juice or being shoved in with an idler car. I'm betting those white ceilings turn gray or black after a very short while...)
Here's a battery electric.
http://newdavesrailpix.com/cnsm/htm/usr_h_frt_455_wyethdock_dame_373.htm
Randy
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