Battery-Electric Locomotives DON’T Work - And Here's Why
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- Опубліковано 1 тра 2024
- Hi. I'm Sam, a railfan based out of Eastern Massachusetts. I film trains from all around the world and make narrated videos explaining how the railroad works. Thanks for watching and I'll see you out on the mainline!
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0:00 - Intro
0:42 - Context
1:40 - Battery-Electric Locomotives
4:00 - Hybrid Battery Locomotives
5:16 - Battery-Diesel Locomotives
5:50 - When Battery Locomotives Work
6:36 - Battery-Electric Passenger Locomotives
9:45 - Ending on a Good Note
10:20 - Conclusion
11:10 - Outro
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Pure battery electric locos would probably be perfect for yard work and shunting, something where they are going to be idle for a large amount of time where a diesel would have to stay running just due to the lengthy process of getting them started. And, being based in a yard, there wouldn't need to be much work to get the charging infrastructure there to keep them charged up
Exactly!
The funny thing is that none of the battery loco manufacturers ever said that any of their units can haul a train in regular operations. This misinformation is purely the invention rail execs! If you ask the engineers they all say that this is A. impossible with current tech, and B. dumb! It's way easier and cheaper longterm to just put up catenary.
Kind of like a fireless locomotive did in steam days.
our ferries actually use special compact semi tricks to both fit more shipping trailers into the vehicle deck and produce less smog in there. i think they run on propane or natural gas? this would be pretty similar.
I can say that's a Great thing they would only be used for
The old diesel electric locomotive I learned to operate did not take more than a couple minutes to fire up when sitting less than a few hours.
Have a look at what they did in Queensland Australia in the mid 1980's. They converted nearly all of their heavy haul coal networks to electric traction. It has worked well for them over the last 40 years with most of the overhead wirings still being the original. The overhead wiring has an expected lifetime of over 60 years.
Australia has only limited amounts of domestic oil, most is imported. There have been discoveries in more recent times but I would say that in the 80s there was about none. So this makes sense. The overheads will last as long as they keep doing maintenance on them, just like the tracks. I bet they use some of the coal to generate the electric for the railways, coal is cheaper than oil but it is evil.
Where did they get the electricity in queensland?
Hi Tony all power was produced from coal. Not enviroment freindly. We had no renewable power resources then unlike we do now. And those in government here don't want nuclear power stations.
@@tonypickens5920Good old, cheap, reliable coal.
So have a look at what Aurizon are doing in Queensland now - converting a 4000-class DE loco to full battery electric operation, with the conversion by Progress Rail (Caterpillar). I suspect you will find that Queensland won't do any more electrification until they've evaluated the battery-electric option.
"Next up Boston's even less functional transit system, the MBTA." 😔✊
Never forget
My god! I don’t understand who keeps putting the worst people possible in charge of the MBTA. At this point, I feel like it’s on purpose.
Will he ever return? His fate is still unlearned
@John Forester’s Worst Nightmare They must be. Isn't there a commuter service on the electrified NEC which uses diesel locos and has a station whose platform tracks aren't electrified. How inefficient and it shows deliberate fragmentation
You mixed the energy stored in batteries (14.5 MWh) and traction power (5.7 MW). To get the run-time on full throttle, divide energy storage with power (14.5 MWh / 5.7 MW ~2.5 h). So 2.5 hours with full power. I don't have any idea on the average traction power on locomotives, which would give the real life run-time. Anyway, hard case for long-haul traffic. Btw. batteries themselves are really reliable, as seen for example on EV's, it's mainly faulty design in auxiliary systems leading to service requirements. And overhead wires are neither free based on upfront cost, nor on maintenance, still looking from Europe it seems pretty strange that even lines with heavy traffic runs on diesel. Maybe price-ratio of diesel/electricity favors diesel in the US?
To distinguish between energy (MWh, Mega Watt hours) and power (MW, Mega Watts), just look for the hour (h). You can multiply power with hours to get energy (MW * h = MWh), divide energy with power to get time (MWh/MW = h) etc.
Electric is cheaper than diesel, by a long way. Besides fuel, the savings are also in lower purchase and maintenance costs, for electric locomotives. The problem is it requires a large up-front investment in the infrastructure, for a long term payback over a few decades. It makes sense in Europe because the electrified lines are very intensively used.
I was coming here to say this!
The reason the US isnt using electric logomotive is to do it big size and low population density, the majority of the populatiin lifes near the cost the middle is alot of unpopulated area and farming land the so called fly over states.
The voltage the trains need is fairly low means the have alot of power loss over long distances, that reduce the efficency of electric trains and increasesmthe cost on top of that you have high cost for the infrastructur. Diesel is just the better option.
Agreed. I was thinking the same thing. I was confused when MWh was stated as a unit of power output. Watt-hour is an ENERGY unit. Watt is a POWER unit. I find it so irritating when I watch car reviews on EVs and they interchange the two units. 😅
Diesel is the cheaper option, not the better one.
There's actually two places where they do work:
Yard switchers
Minimal-gauge railroads, particularly in the "minimum" gauges
Battery-electric yard switchers are pretty much a proven concept at this point, and have been in use on-and-off as early as the early 1900s. The reason why they work here is because they operate at relatively low speeds, move relatively small amounts of rolling stock at any given time, and can stop to top-off between jobs very easily. One of the big issues with catenary wire is installation cost, and while it's not prohibitively expensive it's more cost-effective to focus on electrifying right-of-ways rather than trying to cover every single siding in a marshaling yard.
As for minimal-gauge railroads, battery power is the go-to for diesel and electric profile equipment on miniature railroads. Internal combustion models of diesel-profile locomotives exist, but they're kinda rendered obsolete at this scale. Only live steam remains untouched here and that's due to the fact that realistic functionality is a major focus with miniature railroad equipment. And as for commercially-operated minimal-gauge railroads, they usually exist to provide convenient cargo and equipment transport within industrial facilities, rather than over long distances, so it's a similar situation to a yard switcher.
Also transporting materials downhill. BHP in Australia just ordered 4 FLXdrive battery electric locomotives from Wabtec to transport ore to the coast. Through regenerative braking on the descent it may be possible to pull the empty train back up to the mine. They'll be experimenting with the 4.
@@MarkRose1337
That won't actually work out that well, you can't have 100% efficiency in energy transfer. There's always going to be losses to waste heat.
@@VestedUTuber Always losses, absolutely. But if for every 160 tons taken down (car + ore), there are 60 tons taken back up, you don't need 100% efficiency. It's more a question of the economics of battery capacity at that point. There are of course additional losses to rolling and wind resistance, too.
@@MarkRose1337 so the electric version of those gravity-powered basket lines Tom Stanton did a video on. it works because the baskets going back up lack any cargo. the cargo basically serving as the fuel.
@@DFX2KX Similar idea, but instead of having to run a cable for hundreds of kilometers, the energy is stored in batteries.
I can only imagine the levels of destruction that would ensue upon one of these juice boxes being involved in a collision or derailment. Imagine 18,000 Lithium-Ion batteries catching fire and exploding behind you. I hope there's a built in fire suppression and power cut off system for a situation like that.
That would be one huge fireworks show.
How's that different from all the explosions and fires that have happened from freight derailments in the past?
@@TheRailwayDrone once lithium starts they can’t be put out unless you have million gallons of water. And take days. The fire even restarts days later after extinguished.
@@djjamar They have lithium fire blankets that can isolate it until the battery can be flooded with water. Where there's a will, there's a way.
THIS!!! Like it's a cluster ticking time bomb just waiting to go *KABOOM*
I remember when Richard Hammond, one of the three guys on the TV show 'Top Gear'', crashed an electric super car. It burned for five days. The fire brigade couldn't squelch it; they had to just wait. There may be some kind of foam now but tons of batteries shorting out and burning would be a toxic mess.
I remember hearing something about how firefighters worldwide are still largely untrained on those types of fires because of how they burn. Something like that.
I remember that incident. Would hate to see it happen with one of these engines especially if they are assigned to a 110 car oil train.
@@bracdude181 **oil?**
Another example. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7, recalled because the battery keep shorting out and bursting into flames due to design faults. It was so dangerous they were banned from plane. Now imagine if that happen with a battery 1000x larger in an underground tunnel between North & South Stations in Boston. Yeah, not good
@@TheWolfHowling Cell phones use a very different battery chemistry to modern electric vehicles.
Internal combustion engines are 10 times more likely to catch fire than battery electric vehicles and the ICE vehicle will quickly become engulfed in flames, giving little time for people to escape. With EVs it is a very slow burn, giving you lots of time.
Fire departments now know that the proper way to extinguish an EV fire is to spray water on the battery until it has cooled down completely,something the local “fire brigade” may not have known back then.
For the record: European battery powered rolling stock was usually limited to relatively short Emu's (eta 150) or to places with many opportunities to recharge (E80 and the Swiss shunting tractor)
The more recent developments (Germany and Austria) do rely on having catenary on part of the route or dedicated charging sections.
And the use of BEMUs on routes with partial electrification is relatively feasible in my book. If the route isn't to long, they can run all day without ever requiring an extended recharging period and can completey replace diesel trains. And they don't need any additional infrastructure, unlike hydrogen powered trains. Of course, the amount of use cases isn't that big, especially not in NA. But at least in my region (Frankfurt), there are quite a few Diesel powered regional express routes, that could easily switch to BEMUs without an issue.
"For the record: European battery powered rolling stock was usually limited t"
For prior generations of batteries, sure.
Electric overhead wire was originally limited too.
Time marches on, tech marches on.
@@neutrino78x Overhead wire is extensive in Europe. Everywhere but the USA has more extensive electrification. The reason appears to be political
@@Isochest
"Overhead wire is extensive in Europe. "
Yes, we know.
Those are much smaller countries.
We have far more railroad than you do. Go back and read my post again.
And see the youtube video "Why Doesn't America Do High-Speed Rail?" by "Lost in the Pound". He's a Brit, but has lived in the USA for many years, and is now a US citizen. He does a good job of explaining to Europeans why it is not practical here.
HSR wants highly dense cities, A and B. Distance between A and B wants to be 200 miles or less. Well, the first problem we have is that in North America and Australia, we don't have cities that are as dense as, you know, Tokyo, London or Paris. The closest we get is New York (specifically Manhattan, not the whole city). It has some less dense cities less than 200 miles away, it's called The Northeast Corridor, and that track is electrified too btw. But we just don't have many regions like that. The ones we do have are so far apart that you wouldn't be eliminating aviation, people would still fly from one such region to another (which is what flying is used for today). Most people drive from Baltimore to NYC. When we're all driving electric cars, in about 20-30 years, this will have effect on pollution, they'll be zero emission vehicles. So you can forget that as a reason.
Some of the trains here in the Bay Area are electrified as well. Bay Area Rapid Transit is electrified, the Light Rail here in Silicon Valley is electrified. Caltrain that connects San Francisco and San Jose is in the process of being electrified. BART is one billion dollars per mile (for everything that has to be done for BART). And these are fairly short distances, SF to SJ is 56 miles.
We're not going to electrify the THREE THOUSAND MILES from SF to NYC, that's ridiculous. It wasn't electrified when it was built because there was no central power plant with that kind of power (in fact, electrical service was just barely being invented at that time). And that's just ONE of the several lines that go all the way across the country. You're talking what, eight billion just to lay the wire for that 3000 mile section? Why we do that when the main way people travel that route is by air, and the best we can hope for is something that goes 1/2 the speed? Probably more like 1/3? And the price would be the same.
In Europe, you guys don't have HSR all the way from Portugal to Warsaw, which is probably the closest distance we can get in Europe to SF to NYC without going into Russia (SF to NYC is a thousand miles longer than Portugal to Warsaw, I think). In Europe most of it is normal speed rail so it would take over two days to make the journey. So if you guys haven't even done that, why would we? To waste money for no goddamned reason?
I don't know what else to tell you, you guys just really need to understand the scale of what you're talking about here. Plus, understand that this applies to Canada and Australia as well. Are they stupid? I think you probably like them. Well, they don't electrify all their track either and they don't waste money trying to replace aviation with HSR.
And please, again, watch Lost in the Pond's video, "Why Doesn't America Do High-Speed Rail?".
@@Isochest and Japan, China..
A professor of mine did do a study on alternative energy sources in teains. The conclusion was that anything more than just hourly local trains justifies electrification.
It's a shame that many US railroads actually abandoned electrification when diesel engines became popular.
Same. I also do agree with the Armchair Urbanist that we can electrify our rail network in America because if the Russians can do it, we can too.
I have no idea why that happened, seems like more of a downgrade than anything
@@kay1229 GM sales tactics. That company has done more to set back public transportation and environmental concerns more than any other company in US history.
Most cities had robust public transportation systems into the early 20th century, but GM talked them into buses instead. Then the cities with trollies looked old fashioned, so they were torn out. Without in city transit, interurban wasn't worth running anymore, so electric passenger rail between cities was torn out. GM also sold diesel locomotives under the EMD nameplate, which used a lot of "modernization" language in their sales literature.
@@kay1229 Lobbying
@@kay1229 Oil Lobbyists
Nice article, but in my opinion, the whole US railway system would be immeasurably improved with State funding, Nationisation , due to the sums involved . Electrification these days costs less than previous years and the rest of the world's railways are electrified and Nationalised and so much more efficient, giving a good return after about 15 years .😊
As a Metra user I pray to god what they’re trying to do does work. But yeah I’m pretty skeptical.
When their second busiest line is fully electric it’s a shame they can’t do that to the entire system
What metra needs to do is buy their busiest lines from the Class 1s and add service. Stop with this Rush hour only service.
adding overhead wires is like 4 million per mile or something like that, it's higher than one might think.
Freight usually doesn't want it because it's restricting both in height and width. Of course if it happens to be a government owned line they can override that.
Probably in like 5-10 years batteries and/or H2 locos will be advanced to the point that they can replace diesel for freight, and higher speeds for passengers not long after that.
Of course at the large inter-regional distances in north america and australia, aviation will always be superior, but for short distances within a given region Higher Speed Rail aka Medium Speed Rail is good.
Electrification is cost effective in high density areas. However, the United States as a whole ranks 161 out of all nations in terms of population density. In areas of the US where population density is very high (e.g. coastal metro areas), catenary or battery electrification is quite feasible. In most other areas, the cost of materials, installation and maintenance of an electrified system dwarfs the cost of diesel locomotives.
@@astropythagorean
" In most other areas, the cost of materials, installation and maintenance of an electrified system dwarfs the cost of diesel locomotives."
Yup. Electrifying all the thousands and thousands of miles of track in the USA is not practical, there are far fewer locomotives than there are miles of track, so once we get a good system for internal green stored power in the locomotive, that's how you make freight and/or medium speed passenger rail green. When you have internal green power storage, all track is intrinsically electrified track because your loco is electrified.
I think there will be some major progress in batteries here in the next five years. Musk thinks it will take about that long to get to 500 W/kg, I think you'd get a lot more performance out of batteries at that point. Plus there are hydrogen fuel cell trains now too. They have them running in Germany and France I think, and iirc San Bernadino County here in California had bought a set to run on their system. 🙂
@@neutrino78x Diesel fuel has about 25-50 times the energy density of the highest density lithium-based batteries. This means battery engines carry a lot of extra weight compared to the energy they produce. On long haul lines, upgrading engines to reduce pollutants is cheaper than converting to battery.
It's possible that battery technology could improve more quickly than expected, but there is a lot of progress that needs to be made before it can compare with diesel as a power source....particularly since railroads compete against a heavily subsidized freight trucking industry (e.g. interstates, highways, roads) that still relies on diesel.
Toronto will be building out an overhead catenary electrification system for its commuter trains in the next few years. The lakeshore line would see wires extended no more than 50km westward for the foreseeable future, but I would be eager to see the first time the Amtrak Maple Leaf towed by a dual-mode loco quietly pulling up to Toronto Union with the pantograph raised in all its glory.
Can't they electrify the rails instead?
@@kiedranFan2035 Like, use third rail power?????
For the P32ACDM they should third rail electrify
@MobiusPrime 2035 More limited in power. The UK has the biggest third rail network in the world and it's pushed to the limit. Some freight and trains use 3rd rail electric locos particularly if diverted off HS1
Cmon guys we're getting full carenary in Toronto why would we third rail it for Amtrak?
India's WDAP-5 is the kind of locomotive of the future for American freight. An electric freight locomotive powered by a pantograph and an overhead wire, with a diesel engine just incase the grid goes out.
Let's say for a traditional standard cab electric/diesel locomotive, the U.S. would need a mix between the GM6C and the SD70
Everyone knows this too. The problem is that rail execs are too cheap to make longterm investments. They want profits next quarter! None of them are planning to stick around long enough to actually see the results of proper electrifications. Hence, it's not worth doing in their mind.
@@TohaBgood2 Nationalization!
@@pepperpillow that would be the downfall of railways in US.
whats the problem with diesel?
@@mejestic124 The current diesel-electric locomotives are just a stopgap on the way to full electrification.
This is a great condensed overview of the whole subject
Hola Alan ❤️
No its not. Completely wrong-headed on the efficiency issue. OLE is a sub-optimal 20C technology that will be disrupted by BE traction for most railway systems that haven't already been electrified. There's a good reason that most of the world's railways aren't already electrified - it's seriously expensive and there's no prospect of the infrastructure costs being reduced in the foreseeable future.
@@davidjones5280 if the target is to reduce infrastructure costs- a feasible one- then that takes away from oil corps’ and therefore governments’ current steady revenue stream.
@@bradyrice6631 It sure does. The upside of radically more efficient traction at scale, energised from low emission sources, is that it significantly increases economic efficiency.
@@davidjones5280 What are you talking about, bud? BE traction is as much a 20C technology as catenary. In fact, both started in the 19th century. As did internal combustion. This has nothing to do with the point. If the tech is sufficiently advanced today to be a gamechanger then it will have an impact. If it isn't then it won't.
Batteries have a fundamental problem right now that has not known solution - weight. You can work some magic for passenger vehicles and end up with a usable if slightly compromised BEV. But for a freight train? How can you justify the insane weight of the batteries? They're literally cutting into the very thing that makes the freight train valuable!
In no universe will hauling a battery of any weight be more efficient than having an identical electric train run on catenary without the battery. This is literally impossible.
Of The only few North America Freight Railroad company's that did go with electrification in select area to test it was Pensy, conrail, Milwaukie Road, BCRail, Sacramento Northern, and Pacific Electric. out of them all the majority of the Conrail and Pensy is now part of the North east Corridor, and the BCRail Tumbler ridge sub, is still intact just not being used anymore, But CP rail still maintains it 🙂 In case it is to ever open again, Tumbler ridge sub is open to motorcar speeder cars only with permission from CP Rail. Majority of the Sac Northern Right of way, is mostly BART, and Sac RT Light Rail, MILW, is long gone but not forgotten, and the majority of Pacific Electric is now light rail and subway. I agree it would be awesome to see class one freight railroads go full electrification but it will be a long long time before that ever happens.
Its so ironic how the modern railroad industry here is so against adding electrification, yet there used to be so many electrified lines in the US back in the 50s.
??? where? Trolleys? The only significant mainline application outside of the very heavily traveled Pennsy line that had to be electrified due to the tunnels is the Milwaukee that had almost the same problem, i.e. a lot of tunnels and in the age of passenger steam locos this wasn't too attractive to people, they also had issues with steam locomotives in very cold weather situations in their very northerly location. When they stopped doing passenger service and had diesels that could go thru tunnels without choking the crew, the wires came down. Saved money and the Milwaukee needed every penny it could save.
Wrong
seems like you got MWh and MW mixed up, the SD-70JBB has upto 14.5MWh stored and a max traction power draws 5.7MWh.
SD-70J has upto 8MWh stored with a max traction draw of 3.2MW right in line with the SD-70ACE-T4 having 3.2MW at the wheels.
I see batteries as having some use on local switchers so not every spur needs to be put under wires and for yard work. I suspect most freight locos will have some battery power given many terminals need overhead access
Yes, this is a very common confusion when discussing engineering terms. I whish that we used only Joules for energy and Watts for power
Go Transit, the commuter train network in Toronto, will be transforming itself into a "regional express rail" network by electrifying key lines starting next year. The decision to use tried and true technology of overhead catenary lines was made two years ago. Battery electric locos weren't in the picture then, and the only other alternative proposal, hydrogen fuel cell locos, was rejected due to "unknown costs and high risks of not meeting timelines with unproven technology ".
might want to look at where all the hydrogen is going to come from, talk about a lot of CO2, that's how to do it.
Where will said electricity come from?
@@tonypickens5920 Niagara Falls hydro power, or one of three nuclear plants in Ontario.
@@haweater1555 GO transit isn't electrifying anytime soon. It'll be years before the first line is completely electrified. Better to just improve the current system. Double track, 2 way, etc.
I seriously think MBTA should just electrify the entire network instead of using a hybrid method. At least they are doing better with the idea than Metra.
This is kinda a fireless locomotive situation, I don't think there meant for long distance 100 car intermodal freight trains, but rather places where it'll idle for hours on end, like a yard or a port.
The only way railways are ever going to electrify (along with many other sorely needed improvements) is nationalization followed up with a deluge of public funding. Private RRs are allergic to any kind of capital investment unless its a bridge collapse or a section that gets an insane amount of traffic (like Cajon pass). The looming railroad strike making congress sweat indicates that right now is the time to advocate for nationalization. Even the mere threat of nationalization is enough to scare the freight RRs into doing some capital investment.
Well, you could do it via regulation - requiring them to electrify an increasing amount of their operation each year in order to receive a license to operate.
Then watch for the abandonment requests to flood in. But you could do rails to trails.
Fossil fuel extraction is environmentally destructive too. At least with lithium mining, the batteries can be used for used for years and then used for grid energy storage after no longer suitable for transportation use. There is also the possibility that the battery materials can be recycled. With fossil fuel, when burned for their energy, they must be immediately and continuously replaced. Also, one thing I noticed omitted from this video was mention of hydrogen fuel cell technology. Canadian Pacific has at least a couple of locomotives powered in this manner.
Hydrogen is not shaping up as a major contender for rail traction. The big Western Australian miners have made it clear that batteries are their technology of choice for heavy haul trains, mining haulpaks (400-500 tons, 1500-2000kw) and other mining utility vehicles. Hydrogen is too inefficient and too expensive. At least one European passenger train operators has abandoned their trial of H2-powered trains, and others have taken them off the list because they are 80% more expensive to operate than either conventional electric or battery-electric trains.
About the MBTA: they've got some overhead electrification (thanks, Amtrak!) and it sounds like their battery electric locomotives will be able to run entirely electrically under those wires at least. If we're lucky they'll end up electrifying a little bit to charge their BELs, then a little more to relieve operational constraints, then a little more, and then "well we may as well buy EMUs, we accidentally electrified this entire line".
I'm not holding my breath, but hey, at least some diesels may come out from under Amtrak's wires.
In the UK quite a few trains have gone hybrid where they use a diesel engine, pantograph for wired routes and electrified rail. A lot of the smaller branch lines in the UK are going either looking at either going hydrogen, battery or the hybrid route. Some freight companies are also recycling older diesel locomotives and fitting new cleaner diesel engines or looking at a alternative bio fuel or dual fuel fuel system's with a combination of diesel, biomethane and biopropaine which massively reduces the emissions from the engine.
8:32 “It would be so easy to purchase and operate electric locomotives for this line [which is already electrified].”
Ackshually they just need to convert their existing locomotives to be able to take electric energy from the catenary.
I agree replacing diesel for long haul locomotives makes no sense, but I disagree that there is not many places where battery electric locomotives make sense.
As you mentioned the hybrid electric units could significantly reduce fuel consumption considerably.
Short haul and yard work could easily be handled with quiet and efficient BEV.
And systems that allow partial electrification to work would be much more economical on many routes.
Battery technology is already reliable and low maintenance and getting better.
I'm sure some of these projects are mostly green washing but I also expect that many BEV projects will take off as economical.
Agree. Even though 1st-gen BE locos are very expensive they will pay for themselves within 2-3 years on the fuel savings in hybrid DE-BE operation. On short-haul bulk train operations BE traction will be able to fully replace DE traction before the end of this decade. A pair of PR BE14.5BBs can haul a 5,000 tonne train over 200-300 miles (depending on route topology) and charge under the wire while loading and unloading, completely eliminating diesel fuel. By the mid-30s this range will double to around 400-600 miles, and double again by mid-21C.
Overhead electrification is better for the environment and cheaper in the long term, at least on lines that see enough traffic. (which is, frankly, most lines, as some calculations put the bar at a minimum of 6 trains per day for it to be worthwhile in the long run.) Non-battery electric locomotives are really long lasting with very low maintenance requirements. Replacing your locomotive or batteries every 15 years is going to be more expensive and much more wasteful than maintaining the overhead wires. Sure, that's probably still cheaper than maintaining a massive diesel generator in each loco. Also you'd need fewer (or shorter) locomotives per train as the absence of a diesel motor or large battery allows for more powerful electric motors to be fitted in the same, or less, space. And then we've not even talked about storage losses of batteries versus the minimal transmission losses in overhead wires. American railroads, except maybe Amtrak, are just allergic to long term capital investment, which is ironic, as that's what's built the railroads in the first place. And don't start with the bs of 'we can't electrify because our rail-cars are too tall' (like double-stacks). Indian Railways regularly run double stacked containers on flat-cars with electric locomotives and overhead wires, and it's a ridiculously efficient way to move cargo long distances. The only thing I could see saving you money with batteries is that you would have small batteries that allow you to not electrify in places were vertical clearance is too tight, at least not at first. Of course, every time you then rebuild a bridge or tunnel, you'd make it a little higher and bridge the gap so that you can eventually just stop using the batteries all-together and keep your electric locomotives going for half a century without refurbishment. Long story short, in the vast majority of cases where BE locomotives are economical compared to diesel traction, OHLE is more economical and resource-efficient in the long term.
There is a similar problem in local transit. If you're building a high tier BRT system with large covered platforms at the stops, bus-lanes over the entire length and high frequency articulated busses, you should probably go for light rail instead. In the long run, light-rail is going to be more efficient than trolley busses, which are going to be more efficient than battery-electric busses, which are going to be marginally more efficient than diesel busses. (all for the same throughput)
The point is to get long-term running costs as low as possible even at the cost of added capital expenditure upfront. It's called investing in the future.
There is no use case because in almost any given scenario it is more economic to just install power lines than to pay for expensive and heavy batteries
The problem in better tech adoption was never that we needed batteries, it's that nobody wants to change anything ever
@@puppieslovies The 4 big mining railways in Western Australia, who between them move 2.5% of the world's rail freight, clearly don't have a use case for OLE and are evaluating the use case for BE traction. There's an immediate use case for hybrid DE-BE traction, with the fuel savings paying for a relatively expensive BE loco within a few years, and the use case for BE traction will strengthen as battery performance continues to improve.
@@davidjones5280 rail companies have incentives that drive them toward unsustainable plans as long as they look better for short term profit
That doesn't make it an actual good use case, it just means the government has failed to step in and establish infrastructure that will be cost effective long into the future
I can imagine the batery locomotive usefull also on the main line. If there are for example three locomotives and one of them is battery powered, it can recharge from regenerative braking from all thee locomotives and use the energy only when accelerating when the additional power is needed. When the train is on the speed, it does not need all locomotives for maintain the speed.
The hybrid DE-BE traction you've described is precisely what WABTEC have designed the 1st generation FLXdrive loco for. The prototype unit with a 2.4MWh battery confirmed 11% fuel savings on a 3-month trail on the BNSF in early 2021, and the production units with a 7MWh or 8MWh battery are expected to deliver 30% fuel savings in hybrid operation.
Regeneration works slowing or going down grade. Not so much accelerating up a grade or on level track.
Batteries are complicated and you need to consider the charge acceptance rate, lith. batteries are good at this but even they have limitations. If your car has an ammeter (dating myself there), you note when you start up the needle jumps over to max charge but even if it's relatively weak (low charge) it will quickly taper off and only accept about 10 amps or less. You can try to force it to take more but this will only result in heating the battery up and wasting the extra juice. And believe me, you don't want to overheat a lith. battery. Beyond this I don't see any advantage to such a combination.
Regenerative braking is more of an advantage for pantograph-powered trains. You can't charge a train fully at a high-altitude area and expect to make use of regen braking when going downhill since you can't cram more energy into a battery than the battery itself is capable of storing, so when you go downhill you can only dissipate the energy as heat. While this can be alleviated by not charging the batteries fully, pantograph-powered locomotives have none of the limitations that battery power has.
@@henryostman5740 Even with 1st gen battery-electric locomotives, the size of the battery relative to the traction power is much more favourable than in a typical EV. As battery capacities increase progressively relative to traction power, charge and discharge rates under load and regen will be quite low (0.3C or lower). All of this was evaluated by @Wabtec in the 3 month pilot trial of their prototype FLXdrive, which had a small battery (2.4MWh) relative to the traction rating of 3280kW. The loco operated in a hybrid consist with DE locos in freight operations and their were no major failures. It achieved the predicted fuel savings of 11%.
Septa here in Philadelphia has been fully electrified for decades. The last diesel line in the septa network was ended in 1983. 90% of the Philadelphia pa commuter rail network was fully electric by 1934
Before the Wellbrook Act
I completely agree with this. While I don't see battery-electrics operating off of mainlines, I do see them have a widespread use as switchers, mainly in container ports and maintenance depots. With these two situations, you can't use overhead wires, due to cranes needing to be used in some form, so overhead wires would just get in the way of this. And, as these distances are short (the largest railroad I could find that I don't see being able to implement full electrification is the Pacific Harbor Line, which is 59 miles in length, though there are likely some sections of the PHL that COULD be electrified), tractive effort, not horsepower, is more important. Not to mention, a diesel switcher spends 90% of its time idling anyways, so a battery-electric switcher could spend 90% of its life being plugged in.
As for passenger railroads, I don't see them using battery electrics for anything other than their maintenance depots, since, obviously, passengers enter from the side, not the top, so electrification wouldn't obstruct operations much, if at all.
The only thing you got wrong is that battery electrics ARE more efficient than diesels, but they DO, in fact, have a MUCH lower power-to-weight ratio than diesels. Just because something is less powerful, doesn't mean it isn't as efficient. Also, battery electrics can use renewable energy, but diesels are stuck drinking diesel fuel, so...
Not to mention, battery electrics are far more reliable than diesels, due to having fewer moving parts, like Satiric stated.
Even with those mistakes, you nailed everything else. So, 9.9/10! Possibly the best video about battery electrics there is!
Battery locomotives have much lower energy-to-weight ratio than diesel, not power-to-weight.
@@RestrictedProceed I fail to see the difference between the two. Could please explain?
@@AutismTakesOn Let's use the example shown in the video. SD70J-BB battery locomotive has 5.7 MW (megawatts) of tractive power and it's battery can store up to 14.5 MWh (megawatt hours) of energy. Regular SD70ACe diesel-electric locomotive only has about 3 MW of tractive power, but its fuel tank holds approximately 86 MWh of energy stored in diesel fuel. The battery locomotive has more power, meaning it can accelerate faster, pull the same amount of tonnage at higher speed etc., but the limited energy capacity greatly limits the distance it can travel, as it can barely sustain the full power for 2 hours (14.5 MWh / 5.7 MW = 2,5 h). The diesel, on the other hand, would be slower due to the lack of power, but it is able to run in full throttle for an entire day, covering much longer distances.
@@RestrictedProceed Is tractive power the same as tractive effort? I only know of tractive effort and horsepower to measure the power of locomotives. I know that tractive effort is how much the locomotive can pull, and horsepower is the rate at which work is done.
@@AutismTakesOn Tractive power is the same as horsepower, i.e. the rate at which work is done. 1 megawatt equals to approximately 1340 HP. Energy is calculated as power × time and is pretty much a measure of how long something can work.
Thanks for this, very informative. Many of the issues you cited why it does not work also applies the efforts by those political forces trying to push to convert 80,000 lb long haul trucks to battery power. Many of the same issues applied to LNG-powered merchant ships.
True
Battery hybrids are better known as battery slugs. The energy savings is non trivial and there is also the increase in power during acceleration. Lower cost batteries and used diesel chassis should make this setup pretty attractive.
MBTA hasn't electrified because it doesn't have a location for an electric maintenance facility that's within the state of Massachusetts.
That is the craziest reason not to electrify I've heard in a long time. I believe you... but wow... MBTA... wow...
@@monder1060 Boston area land is very expensive and for political reasons the jobs have to be in Massachusetts. Readville is the one location where there is space that should be MBTA owned, but idk why that hasn't been floated as a solution.
Remember, Cuomo screwed up the LIRR Mineola junction just to avoid taking some politically connected land for MTA use. Eminent domain is a politically sensitive activity.
Can't it just pay amtrack to use their depot?
@@davidty2006 there's not enough capacity or capability at Southampton Street to handle MBTA work and towing the engines to Wilmington is impractical.
Just imagine what the Milwaukee Road would be today if they had kept their electrified lines and survived beyond the 70's. They would of had so much of an advantage (financially and environmentally) that they would likely have forced other competing railroads (BNSF, UP, CN, CP) to go electric just to keep up. Oh my, what could have been.
The Milwaukee also produced much of its own power and used regeneration because the electrified area was in them mountains.
Ireland has ordered dozens of battery-electric trains off Alstom. The idea is for them to come into service and bridge parts of commuter lines in Dublin that don’t have overhead lines yet; it’s called DART+. They’re also planned to be used in Cork. Might be a legitimate use-case for these locomotives but we’ll have to wait until they come into service in 2026
Ireland invented the battery powered train they ran from 1932 to 1948 but low electric supply used to charge the batteries is why they ended the service in 1948
Hybrid catenary-/trolley & battery-electric locomotives work very well, because the can bridge non-electrified tracks whilst getting their batteries recharged on electrified-tracks!
Theres also 3rd rail that is cheaper than cantenary by adding a 3rd rail
great documentary about the many battery powered locomotives coming in the near future! was wondering about these units and how the future of them might play out!
only ones i know in britain are plans for bi mode and Tri mode Class 800 series using batteries along side a pantograph and a diesel engine for the tri mode.
3dicks, or whatever, keep in mind that it's 2022. Electrical equipment was developed hundreds of years ago. What is this "future" that you are dreaming about?
@@bo840 ok first off, there is obviously gonna be more of these made in the future, what I was saying was that I was wondering the future of these battery powered locomotives, to see if they would be a failure or a working product, and if you can't even bother trying to type out a 3 letter name, then I doubt you can make a sustainable argument,
@@bo840 Light metal battery technology, which is the key to 21C BE traction, only came into use for traction applications in the early 2000s. BE traction using 20C heavy metal battery tech was only suited for limited applications because HMBs can't handle sustained high power output.
We have several of those Genset Battery Powered Switchers in our yard just rusting. They couldn't move shit without overheating and potentially catching fire. So we just switched back to Dash 8s.
I wish we still had EMD SW1200s. Those buggers could pull ten times their own weight and were durable as hell.
In my opinion, you're thinking about this the wrong way. You see batteries as replacements or impediments to 'real' electrification. But a lot of these battery powered locomotives get their charge via overhead catenary lines, and can even charge on the go.
This means that in the future a line can be 100% "electrified" even if the overhead wires don't cover the entire route. Wires are expensive, they need constant maintenance and inspection, and are vulnerable to weather and other disruptions. Freight yards and industrial tracks will probably never make financial or practical sense to electrify. Freight RRs have legitimate reasons for not going purely catenary-electric.
But if you could get away with stringing wires for, say, 1/3 of a line's length and run on battery power the rest of the time, suddenly it makes far more economic and practical sense to go electric. Wires can be placed strategically, such as on steep grades, and avoided where there are extra risks or costs, such as low tunnels or rail yards.
That's why I think battery locomotives will enable electrification, not hinder it.
Good counterpoint, didn't consider this
First, this has all been addressed before. The opposition to electrification of any kind is ideological within US freight rail. Their main customers are oil producers. It is suicide for them to go for electrification. Whichever one of the "big boys" does it first literally loses their best customers overnight and promptly goes belly up. They will only do empty gestures. If they do anything more on this front then they're toast.
Second, we know that electrification is more profitable long term even though it is a very large investment. That's why most of the developed freight networks around the world are already starting to switch to catenary and some already have. Diesel-electric is already mostly intended only for spurs where it's just not worth it to electrify. But the mainlines are all planned to be run under electric power.
The problem is that about 70 years ago our government decided that having an extremely centralized transportation network with a few high throughput choke points is terrible for defense. A few well-placed nukes can completely paralyze all the industry and troop movements. That's why almost all the rail subsidies have been switched from rail to highways. (The Germans have shown everyone how effective autobahn/highway networks are for troop movements during WW2.)
Most of our freight operators started chocking without the government dough almost immediately. And by the 60s-70s a bunch had already failed. Ever since then our entire freight network has basically been feeding off this giant husk of massively overbuilt infrastructure from a long bygone era of greatness and plentiful subsidy money. They have absolutely no reason to invest in any kind of a future. They don't believe that they have one. Our Class 1s aren't planning on being around long enough to reap the benefits of electrification investment. It would be a complete waste of money from their point of view.
It's a shame the F40 conversions don't sound like they're set up to run in hybrid mode - one diesel and one battery slug, one on each end of the train. That could give the 11% fuel savings - probably more, since a commuter train does a lot of stopping (regen!) and starting (high torque!) and they could be assigned to peak service trains if they needed to recharge during off-peak hours.
To clarify I'd have the F40 Battery locomotive at one end and a diesel at the other, not two on each end.
F40s are not meant for today's railroads anyways
Unfortunately there are no free lunches when it comes to transportation regardless of the source of motive power. As mentioned it seems like Amtrak has the best and most focused use case for the units that they're deploying. You mentioned the ~11% fuel savings for some of the large freight units. I wonder how that fuel savings stacks up against the cost of purchase and maintenance of those units. I do like the idea of it being almost completely charged by regenerative braking, though. To me that seems to be a bit cleaner, at least, when compared to something you plug into a likely fossil fuel powered electrical outlet to charge. (battery production environmental concerns not withstanding)
"Unfortunately there are no free lunches when it comes to transportation regardless of the source of motive power"
Where's the pollution on a TGV hooked up to a nuclear reactor?
It's the same with a battery powered car or train that's charged by nuclear.
Same goes for solar, wind, geothermal, etc.
main advantage to battery/h2 is that you have the electricity with you on the trip. So all the track in the world is electrified, as far as your vehicle is concerned.
@@neutrino78x You've never mined and refined uranium nor had to deal with its post reactor biproducts I'm guessing. And that's when things are normal. Let's not mention that little incident in Fukushima in 2011 when you talk about Japan's "clean" nuclear power. Geothermal is a good idea in theory but it's very inefficient compared to "conventional" and nuclear fueled plants. And you want to talk about the advantages of battery efficiency. Well let's look at how batteries are constructed right down to the mining of the base minerals Not to mention the slow rate of underway replenishment. With a traditional diesel you stop, fill up in a few minutes, and are off again, even with "fast" charging technologies they're still very slow by comparison. Hopefully both of these downsides will improve with newly resurgent development in "salt" based batteries, whish looks pretty cool honestly, but so far Lithium is still king. Wind energy is good for areas with prevailing winds but requires a lot of space and when the wind towers are decommissioned they're just buried as most of them are made with fiberglass composites that can't be, or at least aren't being recycled. There are issues with solar power as it requires a lot of upkeep so far as cleaning to remain efficient and similarly requires a very large area not to mention the sun doesn't shine 24/7 with most areas experiencing large overcast seasons in the winter.
As I said. No free lunches.
@@shanes-aquatic Coal plants emit radiation during normal operation. Nuclear plants do not do that on the same scale. Let's not fall for propaganda, here.
Believe me they plug in way more than they regenerate. I am sure there are applications where these will work out fine but generally railroads look a cost and it is way cheaper to take an old mainline engine that is tired but still has some life left, derate it, and use that for yard service or local deliveries. Also on branch lines.
The production BE locos are expected to achieve 30-35% fuel savings when operating in a hybrid consist (DE-BE-DE). For large freight train operations the fuel savings should pay for the capital cost of the BE loco within 4-5 years.
2:59 15.6 MWh is a massive pack size the dscharge would be over a few hours even at full throttle (4.5 MW) so that would be a relative low discharge rate. The main question is if they used net or gross capacity.
15.6/4.5 ≈ 3.5 hours
This is a key point. The quoted operational capacity of the PR SD70J-BB is 14.5MWh, with a maximum traction rating of 5.7MW. So at maximum output the C-rate is ~ 0.4, which is a lot lower than max C-rates for automotive EVs (as high as 2.0-3.0). As BE loco battery capacities increase these operational C-rates will progressively be lower, resulting in less stress on the battery system under typical operating conditions.
They should just electrify, its a big capex up front but as of now are these companies not posting record profits? So they must have some cash reserves. While they are at it they should upgrade all mainlines to at a minimum double tracks. as that would also make the lines more efficient and delay Amtrak less.
I think in the end the mistake the US made was not keeping all the rails government owned, When they sold off ConRail they should have kept the rails and sold off the trains. Like how they own the interstate system but not the trucks. On paper we could have a fully electrified national rail network and companies pay a reasonable fee to use said rails.
YES !!! I AGREE. The Federal; Railroad Administration would be like the Federal Aviation Administration.
This is what countries in Europe did. The infrastructure is government owned and maintained. And operators pay a fee per mile driven on the tracks.
Maybe I missed it, but how long would these batteries last? And is battery replacement more expensive than replacing the loco?
Batteries now last 5000-12000 cycles depending on chemistry and application. At 5000 cycles a 1st -gen BE loco in intensive service would probably have a battery life around 5-7 years. At 12000 cycles it would be around 12-15 years. Replacing an 8MWh battery at current prices would cost around US$1.6M, but probably be a lot less than this by the time battery replacement is due (battery costs are expected to decline significantly in the next few years). For 2nd-gen BE locos entering service around 2030 battery life will be a lot longer because larger battery size relative to traction rating means fewer charging cycles each year. By the mid-2030s it could be expected that battery life for a BE loco will be around 20-25 years.
Interesting to see a video like this coming from a channel who provided the most information on the various types of battery engines in the first place. Even though I feel battery power is better than diesel in terms of fewer emissions, there are absolutely more drawbacks ranging from longer charging times to lower MPG (the latter of which ultimately canned the LIRR M7 battery conversion program since the batteries would be poeering everything inside the M7, leaving something like 15 miles of running before recharging). Likewise, a bunch of freight and passenger railroads want to use cheaper options (as far as they're concerned, the benefits of a 0 emission electric engine without the electrification infrastructure), but that also has to do with a fundamental issue of lack of funding and attention that the rail industry receives in the U.S. I do find it ironic that the diesel hybrids seem to be getting the most approval, as it conveniently still relies on fossil fuels and oil companies to power it. Thank you for continuing to inform the public about the various developments in railroading, especially in the field of alternative fuels, as this channel deserves much more attention and praise for your hard work.
What we all seem to forget about electrification is that the locomotives do not creat emissions, but much of the nations electricity still comes from coal fired power plants which create more carbon dioxide in a day than you can imagine.
If they could only get 15 miles out of the M7's that seems to be a specifc issue. BEMU's with 100+ mile ranges currently exist and operate in europe.
@@brysongrondin611 yes, but electric generation shifts and will change over time as cleaner energy takes place and slowly replaces fuels, electrification wherever you like it or not is the way to go, just for the sake of futureproofing, making everything electric will ensure that once the step to cleaner energy is done, we won't have to deal with modernizing all lines and trains, since it will be already done, 40% of the US energy generation comes from nuclear and renewables, batteries are just class 1s trying to get green press and save a buck on electrification
@@ishiddddd4783 We'll see. It goes full circle. The railroads make loads of money from coal and other fossil fuels that make the power at these same plants that would provide their power. They may at least break even on their power costs if that were to remain, but if nuclear or other power takes over, they lose out on a customer they would be receiving service from. That doesn't seem like something a class one would be very happy about, and we know how much power there is in money. It would not at all surprise me if they play a part in the hesitation for the switch to electric power while green washing the public in the meantime with stunts like this.
If electrification is inevitable, the railroads might follow the example of Iowa Traction Railway, which is running for decades, and using century-old Baldwin-Westinghouse steeplecabs.
I had the pleasure of seeing a battery powered locomotive in person and the irony of the situation is that after it started moving a few feet, it stopped and I was constantly seeing the engineer go from the cab to the rear of the loco constantly while scratching his head like if there was some serious issue and he does not know what it is.
Details please. When? What type of batteries? Production or prototype? Almost certainly not fitted with modern 21C batteries. Do you seriously think that major rail operators (big mining companies, UP etc) would be ordering BE locos if they were this unreliable?
@@davidjones5280 The companies "ordering" BE locos are most likely doing it solely for the PR, for the illusion of "going green". It has jack shit to do with their viability in the long run. It's classic greenwashing.
Maybe the cord was not very long?
@@erbewayne6868
😂
@@davidjones5280”do you seriously think that major rail operators (big mining companies, UP etc) would be ordering BE locos if they were this unreliable?”
In a word, yes. It’s greenwashing pure and simple.
Imo, having partial electrification to charge battery powered trainsets or locomotives while moving is an okay stepping stone to improve service and emissions. Hybrid usually means using diesel for most of the time, instead of all the time, so it makes a difference, but nowhere near as much.
I feel that yard switchers and short daytime commuter rails are the best bet for battery electrics. Given the range limitations and charging times. But I agree overhead line electrification makes the most sense in the long run. But our long distance routes are the most challenging. Plus the fact that CA and other states are at the limits of electricity production at the moment.
They say the limit because power stations - regardless of type - are eyesores. The primary reason for "farm" collections of even *green* power structures - which is also doable with non-green power structures - is reduce eyeball impact.
California is not at the "limits of electricity production". The problem is that a lot more extreme weather events happen these days. When the entire state is trying to crank it's ACs to the max for weeks on end, the grid starts to give. That's not abnormal. Power companies do not want to maintain enormous amounts of extra power generation that idles for years on end until a freak weather event happens. On any given day, most of the power generation capacity of the grid is already sitting idle.
You _could_ do this, but it would be extremely inefficient and a for-profit energy producer would never pay for it. The only way to do this is to subsidize the power company explicitly to maintain this additional capacity for that freak day once every three to five years, when that extra power generation is actually required. But then you can't run the public utility "like a business" and at least half of our states won't do it for ideological reasons.
for the partial electrification of a line I think that it is a good way to spread out the cost of full electrification. Use battery-electric locomotives on the partly electrified rails and then fully electrify the rails and swap to pure electric locomotives
Once rail operators go with this model of partial electrification, it's very unlikely that there will be a future business case for extending OLE, as battery performance improvements will continue to extend the range of BE operation at marginal increases in cost. It's expected that battery energy density will increase by a factor of 3x to 4x between 2020 and 2050. This would mean that a BE traction unit providing 90km of route extension today will be providing 270-360kms of route extension by mid-21C.
Electro Diesels are the only practical option here. The Private Freight companies in the UK are going this way to counter our corrupt politicians' resistance to rail electrification
Interesting video.
I certainly think with the long distances and sometimes punishing grades on some railroads that pure battery would be hopeless. For switching in city yards, or as an alternative power source while freight or passenger trains are passing through city areas wouldn't be as bad. Why not have just battery units with no traction equipment that just supply power to the traction motors so the diesel on existing locomotive can be shut down in restricted or sensitive locations. The locomotive with the diesel shut down acting like a slug with power from the battery vehicle.
We have several variations in the early stages in the UK. Battery units with diesel generator back up. On Merseyrail, a 3rd rail DC system they will be using Lithium Titinate batteries on the Stadler built class 777s to extend the range of electric services beyond the 3rd rail network. 3rd rail extension is frowned upon now due to the electrification risk of rail workers and trespassers. Batteries taking their charge once the train has returned to the 3rd rail network, or having short 3rd rail stretches at a terminus or depot that's only energised when a train is present.
A company called Clayton is building battery shunters (switchers) for industrial use. Battery locomotives being used for decades now on London Underground for use when the 4th rail system is isolated for emergency or engineering works to take place, track renewals etc. These old locomotives using lead-acid batteries for traction power.
On order are class 93 tri mode locomotives. 25kvAC, diesel and battery. This allows for a smaller diesel for non electrified lines with the battery providing a boost when needed, and storing energy from braking. We don't have many savage grades in the UK, a lot is fairly level. Where the topography undulates where possible and practical it is levelled out using embankments and cuttings. Even in Victorian times before heavy mechanisation railway building involved a lot of soil movement. But then it was an already accepted practice going back to the days of canal building and the skilled labour was available.
I can see batteries traction being more practical in the UK and mainland Europe where the length and weight of trains is a world apart from those in the US, as are the distances covered. Especially for the numerous commuter services and networks in the UK and Europe. Some freight trains in the UK can have a journey of an hour or less between point of origin and the customers depot, especially where aggregates are concerned, and weigh under 2,500 tons.
I do wonder what will happen to these life expired batteries in the future. Are we heading for an alternative pollution problem, both from the spent batteries and the processes and energy required to mine, process and transport the materials to make the batteries??
Perhaps what we need to do is look at society as a whole, housing, shopping, manufacturing, town and city layouts, to reduce the need to move people and materials such vast distances that we've come to expect. It's all food for thought, and I can't see much change happening in my lifetime.
The reality is that everyone knows that batteries are just too heavy to work on trains. Even if you reengineer the rolling stock, even if it's all aluminum and carbon fiber, it still won't work. You plug in all the numbers and it's immediately obvious that any battery locomotive will have to spend up to 95% of the time charging. This works fine for a personal vehicle that sits in the garage most of the time anyway, but it just can't work for a fleet vehicle like cab or train. Those spend most of their time in operation!
This is just cheap greenwashing propaganda. Everyone knows what they need to do - catenary and full electrification. But they don't have any money and the American public hates spending on public transportation and trains. So greenwashing is the only thing that's left.
The manufacturers are just playing along because they still get paid for this. But any engineer from those companies will tell you that the range is just not there on battery locomotives. But they still want to make a buck, so...
Define "hopeless". My bet is that on 'punishing grades' for heavy trains where pusher/banker locos are used now, you'll see DE pusher/bankers being replaced by BE traction for both up-grade and down-grade assistance within the next few years. A pair of SD70J-BBs will be able to haul a trailing load of ~ 3500 tonnes up a 2% grade at 25mph (40kmh) for up to 50 miles (80km), then provide down-grade assistance & regen charging.
@@davidjones5280
Not what I said. I never mentioned banking locomotives. I was talking about them as the only form of traction.
Yes, like shunting/switching locomotives, a battery electric banker could work. It could return to its stabling point and take on a charge while waiting for its next duty, or if part of a consist take charge from braking and or from a coupled diesel locomotive when it's not requiring all its output to power its own traction motors on level or falling grades. We have locomotives on order that are electric, diesel and battery. When on diesel, the battery can be utilised when extra power is required for gradients or getting a heavy (by UK standards) train rolling from a stand.
If anything, the LIRR should invest in the same Siemens dual-mode ALC-42E trainsets as that of Amtrak for Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor (Philadelphia-Harrisburg) service, except that the electric power car have third-rail pick-up shoes instead of the pantograph. Unlike the Metro-North line to Poughkeepsie, in which the third rail is an "under-running" third rail (similar to SEPTA's Market-Frankford Line), the LIRR uses the more-conventional "over-running" third rail as used in the NYC Subway System, thus switching from diesel-electric to the 750 V DC third rail on Long Island at the Queens-Nassau County Line would be much simpler than to rely on potentially hazardous batteries. Even Amtrak has made the same mistake and instead, use a dual-mode ALC-42E using a power car using third-rail pick-up shoes instead of batteries....until the can electrify the NYC-Albany portion of the Empire Corridor with overhead catenary using the PRR's 25 Hz AC traction system in the tunnel, then switching to the "standard" 25 kV/60 Hz AC from the tunnel portal to Albany.
The LIRR and the old NYC lines along the Hudson are yes third rail but they are also DC, I believe 600v for the LIRR and 750 for the NYC. I believe that the third rail operation is a limitation on potential top speeds, probably about 79 mph tops but i could be wrong on this. I know that Amtrak has locomotives that do this but the Siemens would have to be considerably rewired to go from 12k volts AC to low voltage DC. Such a locomotive would have two shoes in contact with the rails most of the time, anyone know how many amps a power shoe can handle? You either do lots of volts or lots of amps, at 750 volts you need about a thousand amps for every thousand HP.
@@henryostman5740 The UK manages to run trains at 100 mph with third rail, though this also is considered to be the upper limit for third rail operation as the vibrations the rail has with the contact shoe are too large to maintain trains at higher speeds.
Lithium-ion fires sure are fun - until it happens in a tunnel.
There are a couple of YT videos regarding fires in train tunnels, and these are not pretty.
However, anything-battery powered just moves the pollution from the vehicle to the coal-powered plant, plus the lithium batteries which'll need to be recycled at the end-of-life stage.
Do you have any videos on GO Trains electrification in Ontario, Canada?
Personally, I think battery-electric locomotives could work. But, only on small short lines. Like the Western New York & Pennsylvania.
I would rather have the batteries on yard Switchers or B units to store energy lost from the non use from the electric motors of a diesel loco, like a railroad slug but with also batteries as ballast instead of dead weight, or add aux Battiers to electric locos as backup
No 😂
If you look over to Europe, you can see this exact thing happening. Continued investment into overhead wire while limiting battery (and hydrogen) to branch line services which are usually short and infrequent.
The DOT of the German state of Baden-Württemberg just recently released a study into electrification. Overarching conclusions:
Where ever possible and funding available put up overhead wire and use EMUs.
This is for the long therm goal of 100% electrification.
If not currently possible use BMU (battery multiple units) with sections of electrification to recharge. Just like the MBTA intends to (but smarter).
Due to the extremely high investment costs hydrogen got ruled out entirely.
There are 603 US short lines with an average route length of 80 miles (128km) and an average haul distance of 32 miles (51km). Battery-electric traction is ideally suited to this type of rail operation, and my prediction would be that US short lines will switch to BE traction within a decade. Many of them are capital-limited and will use options including conversion of existing DE locos to BE traction, or leasing of new BE locos. www.aslrra.org/ASLRRA/document-server/?cfp=ASLRRA/assets/File/public/about/Facts_and_Figures_eVersion.pdf
@@dylanwinn3 Railways don't "just" put up wires. If it was that easy most of the world's railways would already be electrified. After more than a century of railway electrification only one third of the world's railways are electrified.
Great video
In relation to the recharge issue. Norway has solved this with their electric car ferries. These things run all day and top up for 15 mins each time they arrive at a port. They were only introduced recently and we were lucky enough to go on one. Very impressive technology.
what is the distance the ferry runs, probably not very far, is it just for passengers or is it a car ferry as well? I believe that in the past (1900s) electric motor launches were popular, good for plodding around a lake in the afternoon or evening, didn't go fast but were very quiet.
What's the charge time, to charge a locomotive to 100% readiness?
With only 14-15 hours use, it's not a very good prospect.
And what is the cost difference, between a fully electric locomotive and a traditional diesel electric?
would they put battery on GE Genesis All-Eletric Genesis and Diesel can power at Battery.
Actually they'd be pretty good for helpers. Still heavy for good traction and can regenerate on the way down hill.
Actively powered slugs
Ideal for helper/banker operations, providing up-grade and down-grade assist, with big regen on the down-hill assist. My tip would be that any rail operators who have a significant helper fleet will be switching to BE helpers before the end of this decade.
@@davidjones5280 I like it as you used the UK word for helpers. Although we don't really have many hills to use them on.
No mention of the Infinity Train (Battery mining train) that charges using gravity. Pretty poor to miss that out.
I found this to be quite an informative video! Now, not only do I know why the LIRR has abandoned its battery-electric M7 project, but also why (except for use in switchers, like the BP4 in Los Angeles) it is not the best idea for cutting emissions on locomotives.
Thanks for making this video!
Just…just electrify the lines, guys… I know it’s expensive at first, but at the long end it’s worth it.
it's just not worth the expenses for freight rail, we're talking about a lot more than just running wires here. Double stack intermodal trains already required tons of investment in raising bridges and tunnels in order for the extra tall containers to fit. Either they dump tons of money raising clearances even more (if it's even possible at all in some places) or it ends up as such a spotty patchwork that it becomes more of an inconvenience than a benefit
The investors would never stand for it. They don't give a shit about anyone or anything but themselves and uninterrupted profit.
@@TheIcyWizard705 theres 2 types of electrification.
750v DC 3rd rail and 25 kv AC cantanary. 3rd rail is quite cheap by just running a 3rd rail along side the existing track and Cantenary running above the tracks. If theres gonna be height issue why not have trains be able to alternate between 3rd rail and Cantanary electrification like the Class 373 eurostars used to. Boom double stack container issue fixed for very little extra cost.
I think that if the railroads electrified, it would reduce, if not eliminate their fuel expenses from their operating costs.
The issue is that power infrastructure - even the "green" sort - is an eyesore to most folks. That is why electrification of the rail network is still resisted in flyover country.
Replacing fuel with electricity increased - not decreased - costs in most cases. The only way it won't is where the government owns both - and this can lie about costs.
This is good until the electric bill comes in the mail.
I'd really like to see proper electrification in the U.S. imagine excursion services with GG1s and other historic electric locos.
GG1s are more of an environmental hazard that a coal steam loco. The GG1s required 25 cycle AC, anyone know where you can find that anymore?
@@henryostman5740 well you can modernize it of course. A lot of historical steam engines have been converted from coal/wood to oil
Ok so question...
What if it's used in. Much smaller railways.. like my own country, kiwi rail and the one other have very small rails, kiwi rail goes for most of the country but in comparison to America it's like 5 hour journeys,
In these diatinces would it be better?
GE designed a hybrid loco that had 3 600hp diesels. Each had a generator. It was used for yard work and short runs. It could run 1, 2, or 3 generators depending on the work it had to do.
Feds and Freight should sell bonds to install wires across the US on the mail lines of UP BNSF and Kansas these are the longest lines
Better yet, nationalize ALL Class I mainline RoWs under the banner of "Consolidated Railroad Holdings Corporation" or "Conrail"/"New Conrail"/"Conrail II" and under the mandate, electrify all the Class I mainline RoWs in the same manner as the national railroads in India are being done (allowing double-stacked containers) along with having a dedicated cross-country passenger-only tracks capable for 110-125 mph service with upgrades done on the NEC, Southeast Corridor (DC to Orlando, FL or New Orleans, LA), the Texas Corridor, the corridor between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and the entire West/Left Coast being upgraded to 150+ mph standards like that of the TGV in France.
@@rwboa22 GREAT Idea.
@@rwboa22 so where would the money for that come from? I'll be honest I look at California's high speed rail project and it really doesn't inspire confidence about something that large scale being anywhere approaching affordable. Also what would you do in places where the clearance cannot be increased enough to run wiring and still allow double stacks to operate? I'd argue that any efficiency gains from electrification would be nullified by having to run intermodal at half of current capacity
@@rwboa22 The last time the U.S. government got involved with the railroads it ended up in complete disaster. Nationalizing the railroads would be a terrible thing. The government can't even run public housing or the U.S. postal system well. Heck! It can't even run itself most of the time.
The U.S. freight system is literally the best in the world today. And unlike EU trains, they are actually profitable and don't devour a massive amount of American tax payer dollars.
What the EU is to passenger trains the U.S. is to freight trains.
Overall this is is a much better take on battery locomotives than I've seen on other channels. Some things I noticed:
- As others have pointed out, youtubers need to know the basic physics behind this stuff if they want to be respected: amateur mistakes like mixing units of energy and power confuse the viewer and muddy the arguments.
- Similarly, you state at 2:02 that battery locomotives are much less efficient than diesel electric locomotives. I understand what you mean, but efficiency has a specific meaning in engineering (% of energy used that wasn't lost due to heat, friction, etc). Diesel locomotives are actually far less efficient than electric locomotives; diesels are at most 30% efficient while battery electric locomotives are, conservatively, 80% efficient.
- At 8:18, you cited concerns about reliability. Where did these come from? IMO if anything they'd be more reliable than diesel electric due to having far fewer moving parts.
- There is no difference between a battery electric locomotive charging off of overhead power and a overhead electric locomotive running off of overhead power. Seems to me like MBTA has a reasonable system where they can roll out electrification in stages. It allows them to steadily electrify the system, while running fully electric trains even if the line isn't fully electrified yet. Of course it remains to be seen how this is actually going to be managed.
- I appreciate you mentioning yard switching and local freight as areas where it could actually succeed. The geeps are many decades old at this point and it seems to me like battery electric would be perfect here.
- I don't see much of a distinction between battery electric and hybrid electric locomotives. All your definition of a hybrid locomotive seems to be is a battery electric locomotive with regenerative braking, and that most battery electric locomotives could fall into this definition. Am I missing something here?
The safety and environmental concerns are definitely warranted, and long haul is impossible right now without being able to swap out a discharged battery with a charged one. But I feel like they have their uses and its important to actually look at how they're going to be used (which you did well).
EDIT: I also think that all of this is speculation, and to really understand how well they work out we'll just have to wait and see.
For lines that are partly electrified, and Diesel locomotives are Diesel electric how hard would it be to just stick a Pantograph on the top and just run the Electric motors from the over head wires and switch the diesel on when the over head wires run out? I feel like i heard someone was doing that for lines around the North east corridor?
NJ Transit uses the Bombardier (now Alstom) ALP-45, which has a pantograph and diesel genset.
Amtrak & Metro North use the GE P32AC, which has a third rail shoe for use in NYC tunnels.
This happens on many lines in the UK. I've been on these trains and the transition from diesel to electric is pretty seamless. Furthermore, the diesel engines on these trains (the trains are all pretty new) are designed to be swapped out and batteries swapped in at some point in the future when the gaps between electrified sections become small enough for those batteries to last long enough.
alternatively, u can replace the high-value resistors on top of the locomotive, with supercapacitors and then the engine be fitted with an electric turbo that supplies maximum boost at low rpm(no more smoke belch at launch or startup). each time the locomotive applies dynamic braking, the energy is stored in the supercapacitor and not fanned away. the stored energy is used to spool the electric turbo and so combustion efficiency is improved across the entire rpm band(lesser emissions same uptime). research needs to be done into the use of thermal cell tech in the locomotive to generate electricity from engine and exhaust heat.
Have a quick look at the "Infitinty Train" proposal for transporting bulk iron ore in Western Australia. A little bit of a dream, however battery electric does seem like a option where freight is moved one direction only (downhill).
Lol, well yeah! If you're going downhill then maybe. The extra weight of the battery is probably only helping the train gains momentum 😁😁😁😁
but as well with electrification, regenerating breaking is already a standard in trains. Even American Cargo Locomotives have it but cant use the energy
Why is it a dream? A 40,000 ton loaded iron ore train at 500 metres above sea level has a potential energy of 55MWh. Currently all of that is dissipated as heat and 5000 litres of diesel is burned for a round trip of ~ 800kms. The nominal energy needed to lift a 5000 ton train 500 metres is ~ 7MWh. Total train energy consumption for the return uphill trip is probably around 35MWh, which should be feasible with 2nd gen BE locos within a decade or so.
If the trains are mostly empty going uphill and mostly loaded going down, that would be a perfect application for pantograph power, as you could feed all of that energy into the grid instead of dissipating it as heat.
@@electric7487 This precisely makes my point about battery-electric traction as a disruptive technology. The option for conventional electrification of the Pilbara mining railways has always been available but none of the companies have pursued it. Instead they are going with battery-electric locomotives from their existing DE suppliers (Wabtec & Progress Rail). Initially they will operate them in hybrid consists with DE locos, but they expect to be operating BE-only traction by the early-mid 2030s.
I have done research for a college paper and our power grid being around 120 years old in the United States, could not handle the fully electrified trains across the country. This, along with all of the extra pull with EV chargers, would overload the grid and cause a system wide collapse.
100 years ago this country was crisscrossed by a huge system of electric powered interurban transit providers.
Our power grid has been in decline for decades. Sounds like it’s about due for a rework.
@@silaskuemmerle2505 More like complete rebuild because of the age of the designs.
Most of what the Class 1's discovered about battery-electric locos also applies to battery-electric passenger cars: Costly, and suitable for low load / short runs only.
I think you misunderstand megawatt hours as a unit of measure. It's a measurement of storage. 14 megawatt hours means, if you ran a set of motors that take a megawatt to run full power. They'd run 14 hours on that charge. If you lowered throttle to the point they're consuming half a megawatt. They'd run 28hrs on their charge.
The way I see it is this, all main lines are overhead catenary cables but rail yards don't have them. In rail yards, they could use battery locomotives or will use small diesel. To keep the cost down, converting the current locomotives to overhead electricity wouldn't be too hard because they already have electric motors, all they need to do is change the power source. Maybe they can still be diesel for a backup if the power goes out though. The overhead catenary isn't a problem for cargo because cargo goes through the northeast corridor. And that also means we could have bi-level passenger cars still. Some corridors might need to be electrified using the third rail because of the clearances but other than that over head catenary works just fine.
New Zealand's Kiwirail has started using some really light-weight battery shunters to do this sorta work. And we've got another procurement of new shunters in the works, with intent being they are all going to be battery or battery with diesel backup.
Extending OLE costs ~ US$1.5-2M per mile, and most rail operators will regard any new OLE investment as risky, with the likely increase in extreme weather events that can and will disrupt OLE operations.
The claim was made herein that the electric unit is not nearly as efficient as the diesel unit, and then the relative range of the two was used to prove it. Efficiency and range are two different things and the claim is completely wrong.
Battery powered locomotives would be a waist, and in reality cost more to operate. The other problem with electrifying our rails is that the tax-payers will pay for the infrastructure upgrade, most likely end up footing the cost of the power itself for the train companies, all while the train companies are posting record profits every quarter...not investing in their own business. The train companies don't pay taxes on the land their rails run as it is. They are informed of being on call 24/7 when accepting the job. They also don't pay full taxes on fuel.
With that being said, Europe has electric trains, it works, most existing locomotives can be retrofitted for overhead power much cheaper than buying new battery or hybrid locomotives. The overhead powered trains can also be hybridized to also run off the existing diesel engine/generator set existing in the retrofitted locomotive. It would be much more cost efficient to retrofit existing locomotives and put in overheads. The area is still there for the train companies to put up overhead poles as most of the rails in America had telegraph lines running beside them in the early years.
I think a better alternative is diesels using renewable diesel, which can be used on even older models without modifying them and by itself, unlike biodiesel, which has to be used blended only and requires older models modification.
For locomotives I think fuel will be with us for long. But most locomotives are already electric with the diesel as just a massive generator. I do think they should star making more hybrids though to recapture and give more instantaneous power and to stop wasting heat in large resistor banks.
Hybrid locomotives are complex and likely to be more unreliable. Given that most freight traction uses multiple DE traction consists, the approach by Wabtec with the 1st gen FLXdrive makes sense, because the same BE loco can be used either in hybrid DE-BE consists to achieve ~ 30% fuel savings or in standalone-BE operation for yard switching (UP) and other tasks (eg helper).
True
Personal opinion - i agree, battery locomotives will not work.
Good day Sir,
when you compare Diesel to Electric Locomotives, there is a mistake. The "Big Battery one" has an Power Output of 5,7MW, which is far more then 4500hp. What you are comparing is not the power output, it is more the capability to store Power. 4800 gal of Diesel roughly equals roughly 181MWh of chemical energy, which, as stated in your Video gives us 86,2 MWhs of mechanical Energy... Thats kinda bad. The E Loco can store 14,5MWhs of electric energy, which can be used for traction with a efficency exeeding 90%.
So the real Problem is Power Storage or charging. Not the Power of electric itself. I mean, every big Diesel Loco is Diesel Electric anyways...
Thank you for the nice Video! Keep it up!
At 7:25 is mentioned that these locomotives can only make a few round trips and spend the rest of the day recharging. There is a very easy way around this problem.
If each locomotive has not one but 2 or 3 sets of batteries dispersed at each end of the run. It can run and discharge its batteries, then stop at one end where battery packs are interchanged. The empty one is put on charge while the loco gets away with a full one. Thus way the loco can run almost 24 h a day, which is very convenient for switcher and commuter service.
Long haul freight trains could use the same principle with charged packs available every 300 or 400 miles (or more depending on the autonomy of the loco). The train stops at a station, the loco changes packs, and the train rolls on.
With proper equipment and trained personnel, swapping the packs should take no longer than 5 minutes, less than refueling a diesel.
None of the information about battery electric locomotives in this video should be regarded as accurate or reliable. For large freight trains swapping container-sized battery packs will definitely be an option as battery prices continue to decline. The big advantage is that batteries will be recharged under optimal conditions without impacting traction availability.
I think your conclusions are correct. Other channels focused on trucks have come to the same conclusions. Like to see your take on Hydrogen using cell technology, seems promising for trucks - what about trains?
Hydrogen is being tested in Europe and also the UK on passenger style trains and shunting locomotives. The larger diesel locomotives we have might be going a different route of duel fuel where diesel can be mixed with either biomethane, biopropaine or hydrogen and pumped into the engine. The studies they have had with this idea have massively reduced the emissions coming from the exhausts of the engines.
The problem with hydrogen isn't the using, it's in the storing and moving.
@@tonyburzio4107 the storage systems and distribution systems have been tested when companies have been experimenting with hydrogen cars. Transportation has also been solved as there are cargo ships carrying hydrogen across the sea. Unfortunately the battery idea with that pantograph connector even though it sounds a great idea it will cost loads of money for every continent to istall on their highways and motorways. This is the main reason not all of the UK rail network is fully electrified due to cost implications.
'Hydrail' was all the go in the railway traction world ten years ago, but it has not matured. Massive efficiency penalty compared to battery-electric. Rail traction suppliers are now looking at both, but the trend is to BE. Hydrogen will only offer marginal fuel cost savings compared to diesel, whereas BE will be a fraction of the energy cost of DE and H2FC.
Secretly I'm rooting for these battery powered locomotives and hydrogen locomotives but only to experience those "concepts of innovation" to exist for that short amount of time for variety sake. But I know there are a waste of money and in the end, it would be better off to just electrify most of the railroad lines and invest in electric locomotives which I would prefer to see. Imagine a Gevo with pantagraphs but it's all electric.
The uk runs hybrid locomotives such as the class 88 which uses a diesel engine plus a pantograph to take power from the overhead wires for freight
If we run _off_ diesel power, then what do we run ON?
THANK YOU! the last comment I have been after North America (Canada as well) to pursue direct electrification, If Russia can have the Trans Siberian railway, that is dual track for almost 10 000 km (that is nearly one quarter of the way round the world not to mention a four track extension which is also electrified, , What is WRONG with NA to go what the rest of the world has done especially in the first world countries. India most likely now considered a second world country with exception to some museum luxus trains and tourist lines like the Darjeeling Toy Train (steam) Indrail had electrified virtually ALL odf its railway system, the largest in the world! HEY! NORTH AMERICA, please DIRECT ELECTRIFY (with catenary-pantograph system). your railway systems! Remember the Climate Emergency? Instead of waging wars every 20 years around the world, this money can be used to help the people here PLUS pay for the electrification (at least the main major lines) of America's railway infrastructure. THE TIME IS RIGHT NOW! Forget about all this lithium-Ion battery system, nonsense, it would be actually MORE expensive than the catenary-pantograph system. so direct electrification with 25 kV 50/60 Hz is the BEST way to go! Direct electrification has been perfected over a CENTURY now! (Nothing new, it has been time tested -- AND IT WORKS PERFECTLY!). Thanks!
Amazing catches of the train coming by and pass, I like it 5 stars, keep up the great work, my friend, Greetings from Portugal to the USA.
Surely the point of battery ele tric locos is not to replace the diesel locos but to work WITH a diesel as a hybrid. The battery loco could supply extra traction on uphill grades and then recharge on the down hill sections. You forget to mention the massive amounts of energy wasted by diesels on downhill grades when they use dynamic or friction brakes. IMO you have presented a very one sided argument.
would the hybrids work better for yard work? Thank you for the great video production.
Battery locomotives work perfectly fine for shunting work in yards where distances are very short. The regen braking capture ones are also perfectly useful as rolling storage. The real problem is that a bunch of these rail execs are pretending like you can run a freight train from a battery locomotive in regular operations, and that is just ludicrous! None of the manufacturers ever said that! Not one!
Batteries sort-of work for personal vehicles that spend 90% of their time charging in your garage. But they don't even work for fleet vehicles like cabs or busses. The only places you can stick these are very low intensity uses or very short distance routes. Even Teslas can't sustain being fast charged all the time. Who in their right mind thought that is something you can do on freight locomoties?
How is anyone still pretending like this is a thing? We literally all have access to the same spec sheets. It is physically impossible with current technology. I just don't get it.
Great video.
You have this exactly right.
My only quibble is that I think frt RRs can find good ROI for electrifying their heavy mainlines. They just have to include all the benefits elecification gives them. Such as higher avg speeds, improved equipment utilization, longer crew districts, greater intermodal market share....
I also would like to see diesel electric hybrids in commuter service. Huge savings from regenerative braking.
Battery locomotives for yard service make sense. Good niche product.
A better solution: have Progress Rail and Wabtec finally work on genset technology and make it reliable for long distance freight locomotives. That way, they don't need to run a big diesel prime mover so often, cutting emissions quite a bit even with modern emissions controls.
If that was a serious proposition the big mining rail operators in Western Australia's Pilbara region would be pushing Wabtec and PR for it. They are proceeding with BE traction on the basis that they are confident it will replace their DE traction on a 1-for-1 basis by the 2030s. There's no realistic pathway for DE traction to achieve the levels of fuel and emissions reduction that hybrid DE-BE traction of all-BE traction can achieve.
GenSet techmology was tried in the 2000's by manufacturers NRE and Railpower, but a lot of them ended up facing the scrappers' torches after only a little more than a decade in service.
Why? From what I can see, they were too complex and too maintenance-intensive, and the fuel savings were only possible under a specific set of circumstances.
@@electric7487 I think the technology was not completely mature at the time. If someone like Progress Rail and Wabtec did in 2022, it would be a lot more reliable.
@@Sacto1654 I'm pretty sceptical of that, too, as I suspect that many of the problems were fundamental and inherent. As they always say, "Don't fix what ain't broke."
@@electric7487 I'd agree, but Progress Rail (ex-EMD) and Wabtec (with its partnership with GE Transportation) are vastly more experienced in building locomotives. That experience could be vital to develop a viable genset locomotive.
In Newcastle Australia there is a battery powered tram line that goes from Newcastle interchange to nowhere at stops the pantograph raises to charge the batteries but say for example if the tram gets stuck in traffic it'll run out of charge and have to get towed back to the depot battery technology is nowhere near where it needs to be to even start considering battery only locomotives
The power to recharge the batteries has to come from somewhere?
Yes! So glad that you decided to take the correct position on this! A lot of rail enthusiasts have been sounding the alarm on this for a while now. This is just bullcrap greenwashing PR propaganda. Everyone can read the spec sheets. The Class 1s always knew that battery locomotives are only good for shunting work in yards and regen braking. They're just trying not to electrify with catenary because that costs money. Because god forbid they actually invest their profits into their own networks! Sure, it would be much more profitable long term, but they won't get their bonuses next quarter!
These people are just bleeding the system dry, wasting incredible past investments in US freight! The executives of these companies don't actually care if they damage the freight rail network beyond repair. They're just milking the existing infrastructure before they retire or move on to another industry.
Question, why does no one talk about bio-fuels like biodiesel when talking about these sort of issues? Are those not a thing anymore?
Because the bartender I refer to as the Wicked Witch of Westchester County and the rest of the "Goon Squad" in DC insinuates on banning all internal combustion engines, even those that get 50+ mpg like your average Harley or Honda motorcycle. Yet biofuels can be sourced from crops such as soybeans (besides, Rudolf Diesel did design the engine that bears his name to run off of biodiesel fuel, not petroleum diesel).
There's not really enough land to grow enough biofuels to fully replace fossil fuels, at least without significantly diverting crops from food production (over 40% of US corn is already used for ethanol, and ethanol is a small fraction of the fuel we consume). You also need biofuels for the really hard to electrify stuff (namely long haul aviation). Rail is fairly easy to electrify compared to aviation, so using biofuels for rail is kind of a waste.
@@AnotherBostonRailfan Fair enough. But on the other hand, electrification is not always guaranteed to be greener. Here's something I really wish more people would bring up when discussing this stuff. Where is the electricity for your Tesla, electric train, etc. coming from? Is it from a polluting source like coal, or a green source like solar or hydro? If it's the former, then that off-sets the electric train not giving off exhaust fumes.
Also, researchers are looking into other ways of producing bio fuels, like alge of all things.
@@DanielChannel57 Algae hasn't really panned - pretty much every notable startup working on algae gave up and went elsewhere.
It's relatively easy to get electricity from fairly clean sources (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc.), and solar and wind are our cheapest sources of electricity today.
@@AnotherBostonRailfan But, do they have the same output as coal and gas? I know nuclear plants do and they're green, but for most people, that's out of the question, considering how well publicized nuclear plant accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima and their effects tend to be.
How about down time for charging? How many hours is that?
You could have a system similar for mining locos. Have the ability to slide out the empty batteries at a charging station and slide in new batteries from the other side.
VS full electrification when your ALWAYS charging
When BE locos are operating in a hybrid consist with DE locos they'll be regen-charging on the move, so very little if any downtime for charging. If they're being used in a BE-only mode it will depend on the type of train they're hauling. In a typical bulk train operation (eg minerals, grain etc) they would probably use pantograph charging under a short length of electrified line while loading and unloading, so again very little downtime.
What happen if we put something like turbine on a giant cargo train.
By putting I mean putting on the wheels itself and produce electricity. How much it would made ?
Battery electric trains actually make sense, but only in Europe and Asia where you already have a lot of electrification and in just some sections on non electrified branch lines.
For branch lines without electrification for long tracks hydrogen powered trains are instead being deployed in Germany for example.
Excellent video! The SD70J will supposedly recharge with regen braking in consists including multiple diesels like the FLXdrive, and I agree that the battery-electrics are nothing but positive news headlines and good public images for the Class 1s.
For long haul NA freight railroads, of course you are not going to have a complete battery driven lines across huge distances. However, mixed Battery/diesel sets like envisioned like Flexdrive seem promising for reducing overall fuel usage, as well as switching operations (which as you might recall, are where diesels often started out in NA). The obvious next step is to recharge those battery electric locos on the move or at regular intervals, such as with short sections of electric wire, to further reduce the need for diesels. Finally, eventually you could maybe see fully or mostly electrified main lines, with battery loco's used to pull consists to their final destinations on less used lines (battery locos running as part of consist under wires to). So while yes, battery locos and multiple units aren't a panacea, they have potentially useful niche cases now with future potential, which IMO neither diesels nor total freight electrification have right now in NA.
how long does it take to charge up a locomotive. batteries after a while never charge up to 100%. it's like battery yard equipment a lady in our neighborhood cuts grass for about 15 neighbors. about 2 years ago she went from gas to battery, After about a week she had a brand-new gas mower. a neighbor 2 doors up about a year ago went from gas to an electric mower to cut his grass with a battery powered mower. Two weeks later a new gas mower. i thought the GE es44 "eco's" took care of all the emissions
Can you do LSRC lake state railway company