Industrial History: Battery Powered Locomotives

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Battery Powered Locomotives

A 4,400 hp road engine is to be tested in a lashup with conventional diesel-electrics on a 560 km route in California. BNSF and Wabtec have already tested a battery shunting (switch?) locomotive, but the article doesn't describe the results of that test. The 560 km test route is between Barstow and Stockton. [RailwayGazette] I wonder how hilly that route is in terms of needing dynamic braking and short term traction and/or power boosts. I'd think batteries would perform best in hilly, but not mountainous, terrain.

safe_image for BNSF and Wabtec prepare to test battery-electric locomotive
CJ Miller So the conventional units do most of the work, and this thing captures the electricity from dynamic braking and then kicks in when the train needs short bursts of additional power? Makes sense in theory, but the costs and the maintenance seem like they'll add up pretty quickly. Oh well, at least they're trying something new, so good luck to them.
Daniel Joseph Day There has been some major breakthroughs made on batteries this past year. Tesla has been working on a high energy battery.
Ted Curphey The way I read some of the tech details on this locomotive is it cannot replace ANY of the diesel locomotives on existing trains, the batteries simply cannot hold enough charge to even come close to that. It only a adds a little to the pulling and braking power to obtain around 10~15% fuel savings on the train under ideal circumstances. Notice they still have the traditional dynamic brake grids because once the batteries are charged, it will switch to the grids as long as dynamic braking is needed.
Donny Albertson Ted Curphey if that’s the case they shouldn’t have bothered putting a cab on it.
Josh Delp Donny Albertson wouldnt you want that in the lead to reduce noise, and to get away from the fumes in tunnels?
Donny Albertson Josh Delp probably hot as hell like any electric loco. And they’re all pretty quiet these days anyhow but cabs are an expensive thing to maintain.
Liberty Ruddy it’ll likely be pulsed DC which is exactly what their ‘AC’ units use too. AC out of the genset, smoothed into DC on the DC link, then pulsed DC forming a dirty AC waveform via the IGBT’s to the 3 phase traction motors.
Jim Lee And the carbon footprint just to produce the BATTERIES is NEVER going to be redeemed if the engine ran without recharging for eight years. But it some yuppie thought that these would reduce pollution and reliance on fossil fuel. PT Barnum said it best " there a sucker born every day".

[At least this "GE" won't have turbo fires.]

Given that the weakness with genset locomotives was the lag for additional engines to start up when more power was needed, it seems that putting a battery pack on them to make them hybrids would be a better solution. Not only could all three engines go offline sometimes, when an engine is running, it could run at its optimal fuel efficient load to recharge the battery.