Companies are developing new technology to electrify trains

Every day, thousands of south-west passengers on trains leaving Aldershot station pass through an array of solar panels located next to the tracks. Few, if any, would notice the installation. But the train they are on draws its power from it.

“On a sunny afternoon, if you’re taking a train through Aldershot, a little bit of the power for that train will come from those solar panels,” says Leo Murray, co-founder and CEO of Riding Sunbeams, a startup that aims to use renewable energy resources for rail electrification projects.

Ride the sunshine It built the Aldershot Array in 2019 . It’s small at just 40 kilowatts – the equivalent of about 10 of the rooftop solar panels you might find on a typical British home. But it shows how renewable energy sources can directly feed railways.

Not only that, but Murray says it is currently the only solar array in the country that provides power directly to the railway to move trains. “If you work on the railways, this is the cheapest electricity you can buy,” he adds.

Across the country, and around the world, many trains still run on diesel — a fossil fuel. To switch to electricity, rail operators have traditionally had two options: electrified railways, or overhead lines to which the trains connect. A pantograph looks like an arm On their surfaces. Installing any of these systems can be expensive and technically difficult.

But engineers are working on new ways to implement such technologies, and very different alternatives are emerging, which could speed up electrification projects.

The main barrier to electrification is often limitations on the local electricity grid – It’s hard to reach To great connectivity to run your trains. “This problem has gotten much worse,” Murray says.

That’s why he finds solar panels so useful in enabling railway electrification projects.

Murray says that, after the Aldershot project, he hoped Riding Sunbeams would go on to build a full-scale commercial pilot. But financing problems got in the way.

Now, Network Rail, which owns and maintains Great Britain’s railway infrastructure, Looking for suppliers For renewable energy projects on the railway side.

“This is the big event,” Murray says, explaining that his company plans to bid for a contract.

However, new projects bring new complexities. At Aldershot, the track was already electrified – it was a case of connecting solar panels to this existing system.

But for trains that switch off diesel and go to overhead lines, harnessing solar energy is more difficult. This is because solar panels produce direct current (DC) electricity while overhead lines use alternating current (AC).

Efforts are underway in England to develop New converter However, it can solve this problem.

Separately, Colton Junction between Leeds and York, the UK’s fastest railway junction – with trains reaching speeds of up to 125mph – has been electrified with the help of software developed at the University of Huddersfield.

The software creates a 3D model of the overhead line system, allowing engineers to plan its construction in fine detail – cutting costs by removing the need for certain forms of traditional testing and evaluation.

“Everything in the software is specified in terms of measurements,” says João Pombo, associate director of the university’s Railway Research Institute. “All trains have been running at full speed at this intersection since August.”

But there are completely different ideas for electricity. Polish startup Nevomo has developed an electromagnetic propulsion system. It has been updated and updated over the existing track by installing a thick aluminum cable in an enclosure extending between the rails. This generates a magnetic field strong enough to propel freight cars equipped with magnets.

“We eliminated the locomotives entirely,” says Ben Paczek, founder and CEO. “Each vehicle becomes independent. They can also work in groups.”

One of the main benefits of this technology, Bachek says, is that it allows operators to stop freight wagons very quickly – and as a result, it means they can, in principle, safely place a lot of independently moving wagons relatively close together on a single stretch of railway, increasing the density of freight transport in a given area.

Nevomo hopes to launch practical applications of its technology at a steel plant in Bremen, Germany, and at a port in India next year.

These will be relatively small in size, each covering distances of less than 1 km (0.6 miles). But Mr. Bachek hopes to see larger facilities in the future. “In an environment as conservative as railways, we need to get that right first.”

He adds that it will be possible to automate the movement of the electromagnetic propulsion vehicles, although they will initially be controlled remotely by human operators.

In the US, Parallel Systems is also working on electrifying individual freight cars so they can move autonomously around the rail network – but in a completely different way, using batteries. Co-founder and CEO Matt Soule says the company’s cars will have a range of up to 800 kilometers.

He describes it as being like moving packages around a distribution center — “dispersed freight,” as opposed to traditional locomotive-drawn freight trains that can be moved. Its length is more than 2 km. “We focus on doing the shorter things that they don’t do,” Soule says.

He adds that his goal is not to replace freight locomotives, but rather to provide a rail-based delivery service that can compete with trucking. “If we simply captured 10% of the trucking market, we would have doubled the rail industry,” he says.

Regulating the movement of individual freight trains on the existing rail network can be “very difficult – certainly on the existing rail network”, says Stuart Hellmansen of the University of Birmingham, who has worked with Riding Sunbeams in the past. [British] Railways.

But he says new technologies are helping to make railway electrification easier – and that electrified trains in general are now the “preferred” option for new railways.

“All of these technologies are financially viable and can work, and it’s a matter of managing the business case,” he says.