Rail solar project seen as stepping stone for renewables

Hi,

Sounds good Lynsay, I wonder how they are going to manage the storage of this solar energy for higher load demand and poor solar intensity; dark days during winter and night operations. Any further information at this moment in time?

Regards

Ray

As I understand it, the output from the solar site feeds into the railway electricity supply, but it's not attempting to provide 100 per cent so there's no need for storage to cover the situations you mention.

There is a British company Vivarail which has developed a battery-powered train with rapid charging at one or both ends of its route. The rapid chargers incorporate their own batteries. Using solar electricity for charging a system like this looks promising but as Lorna says, it could not be relied on 100% of the time. (I'm happy to explain why the Vivarail system uses batteries on the train and batteries in the chargers if anyone wants me to)

I think that's obvious, Tim. You need to charge the train in the dwell time at the platform. So, a nice lightweight train like a Class 230, only 2 or 3 vehicles. It's still a fairly impressive power flow, but only for a short period.

What type of batteries / cells are they using and what sort of chaargers are in place at these charge points?

Lithium of course, the exact chemistry being something that the battery manufacturers like to keep to themselves. But this is in the public domain:
https://vivarail.co.uk/vivarail-and-hoppecke-announce-long-term-supply-of-batteries-for-class-230s/ 

No relation to Paul Butchart, I assume, Raymond? Small world if so.

To Ian Campbell-Kelly - The need for a battery built into a train battery charger might not be obvious to everyone. Don't assume anything :)

I think I did explain... it would be very rare to have a big enough power supply at a railway station (that doesn't have overhead 25kV) to fast-charge a train within the normal dwell time. You need a local energy store at the charge point that is 'trickle'-charged while the train is en route. Solar could contribute to the trickle charge, of course (remembering the title of the thread)

The Riding Sunbeams team have got some new funding for a demonstrator to plug solar into the AC rail network (Aldershot is 750V DC). This one will include Li-ion batteries for storage. https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/06/solar-firm-to-develop-novel-electronics-for-rail-renewables/

There's also an article about both these projects in E&T August-September 2020, which is going in the post this week. Riding Sunbeams is looking at feeding renewables into the electrified railway. Vivarail's work is on battery-powered trains where there's no electrification, and now Hitachi has teamed up with Hydrive on battery-powered trains that can recharge under the wires and then run onto non-electrified branch lines. That's also in the latest E&T, and online here: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/07/battery-boost-for-low-carbon-train-travel-without-full-electrification/

Sorry, Hyperdrive, not Hydrive.