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HS2 railway

CliveS
We would all agree that an express link fro London to Birmingham and Manchester would be of great benefit BUT do we have to electrify the entire length of track or just the parts inside city boundaries. 

We can half the construction/infrastructure cost if we use diesel electric trains cross country and convert to electric only inside the city. 

This is environmentally friendly as power stations are only 60% efficient at best and mostly use gas at normal/peak times anyway; isn't it ??
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    Then I last looked, the 5000 litre price for red diesel fuel was 57-60p a litre depending on how soon and where you want it delivered.

    The whole sale electricity price averages about £70 per megawatt hour, thought the domestic rate for small users is about double that.

    (Railways are not small users....)


    so 120 litres of fuel has the same bulk cost as megawatt hour or so at wholesale prices.

    If we ever get to a time when the price of electricity per kWhr is less than the price of a quarter of a litre of diesel then we should review the situation.  




    Right now it is already less, nearer  half in fact, though from what I know of generator efficiencies, you will be hard pushed to generate electricity from Diesel at that rate, except if the generator is fully loaded all the time, - on a fully loaded set 1MW might on a good day be 250 litres  per hour, as you suggest,  but sadly at half load, the fuel consumption falls to  perhaps 3/4. Inverter gensets do better, as you can allow the revs to fall at part load.



     


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    Interesting set of prices Mike, but the bulb price at a power stations busbar does not include the transmission, distribution and the marketing costs of national grid, network suppliers and metering companies which is bound to increase the price.

    On the other hand we could look at the middle east price for crude diesel oil at 200 litres for £60 and make that comparison with our bulk electric prices.  we can.

    We want a win-win if

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    I'd rather assumed that a railway will posses its own transformers and final mile distribution, and will take in feed at HV.

    I agree there will be variations on how it might be done, my point is that even ignoring the regenerative braking, on energy cost MW for MW, Diesel is not much cheaper, if at all, I suggest we may already be in the 'worth doing right now ' territory..

    I'm not sure how much the railways move their own liquid fuel around or get it delivered to local depots. But there are many ways (idling hours, running at sub-optimum speed for hydraulic clutches  for example) that diesel engines are sub-optimum - I d not know if you are aware of this  study by Ricardo a few years ago looking at how diesel fleet efficiency might be improved.

    Some of the fuel use figures are staggeringly bad.The typical freight duty cycle suggests 84 % of the time the engine is running, it is idling, just to maintain electrical supplies and train heating, rather than useful traction Even local passenger services seem to manage to waste about 39 % of the run time just idling. They do assume for payback calculations (e.g. page 161, looking at adding auto stop and start mechanisms, 60p per litre, so presumably it is not far off to use the red diesel price- and I would agree that this is idiotic that automatic engine start and stop is not already being done)

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    Sparkingchip:

    and Bromsgrove station has been rebuilt with a longer platform, but have the trains increased in length yet with more carriage added to them?


    Andy 




    I thought the advantage that electric trains have particularly at the small commuter train size is that with traction units under each carriage an infinitely long train can be coupled together, unlike a train with diesel locomotive or for that matter a steam locomotive which requires additional banking locomotives to be added.


    Bromsgrove station is at the bottom of the Lickey Incline the steepest sustained main-line railway incline in Great Britain, so the size of the trains are limited by what can get up the hill into Birmingham, which I thought was a problem that electrification can resolve. 


    Andy 

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    I know HS2 won’t be built with difficult gradients that the locos will struggle on and the length of the trains is determined by the length of the platforms, however I thought electric traction is far more efficient hence diesel electric trains being a mobile diesel power station supplying electric traction.


    Andy
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    I believe that when they were extending the Jubilee line on the London Underground they made the new stations with longer platforms so that they could run longer trains, hence carry more passengers (or at least have less overcrowding). However they had not taken into account that on the existing stations the extra carriages would still be in the tunnel and the passengers unable to get off......
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    Sparkingchip:


    Bromsgrove station is at the bottom of the Lickey Incline the steepest sustained main-line railway incline in Great Britain, so the size of the trains are limited by what can get up the hill into Birmingham, which I thought was a problem that electrification can resolve. 

     



    I have wondered if there are proposals to electrify the line between Bromsgrove and Bristol Temple Meads to enable longer distance trains to make use of the electric wires above the Lickey Incline. It seems a bit of a waste to install them in such a strategic location just to extend the Cross City Line services from Lichfield Trent Valley a few miles southwards.

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    To follow on from MAPJ1's comments on electricity prices there were some interesting numbers in a Telegraph article on the problems facing British Steel.

    'According to data from trade body UK Steel, British steel companies pay £65.07 per megawatt/hour (MWh) for power, compared with £30.92 for rivals in France and £43.11 in Germany.'

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/05/27/steel-makers-call-level-playing-field-power-prices/


    This is unfortunately behind a paywall but the UK figure is very similar to the one quoted by Mike. Does this mean that the 'Green Taxes' on UK electricity actually make diesel more attractive than on the mainland?


    Best regards


    Roger
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    The Telegraph is only echoing contents of this report, here  published last December.

    Yes UK electricity is getting more expensive - its partly having to use  imported gas now the balloon in the North sea is going flat, that in comparison was almost free, and partly a taxation thing.

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