In a past life, I was on the board of a large city-owned utility, and then worked as a CFO for a public power company in a midwest state. I don’t think the public has an idea of the massive, massive amounts of electricty it will take to maintain mobility and freedom of movement for people if all we have is electricty to power movement.
I am hoping that railroads may be able to find an alternative to electricity such as the hydrogen option that would be non-carbon, as they would have the ability to haul tenders-full of fuel. If everything is electric in the future, the cost of the electric “fuel” is going to be enormously expensive because the demand will be enormous and there will definitely be a scarcity of electric supply. That may give them an advantage over electric trucks, even autonomous ones, because the cost of electricity in that world is going to be very, very high.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have electric trucks or vehicles, but I think figuring out how to be “non-electric” will give railroads a cost advantage.
That would probably be the ideal situation, but I really believe it would be limited by where it is.
In the middle and west part of North America, the vast distances raise the issue of where will the power come from. After the billions and billions of dollars to string the wires, there will be the need for power generation to electrify those lines.
There already is a backlash against taking valuable land for windmills and solar farms, and the increase in demand from cars and trucks will just force higher costs for railroads to use the electricity.
Their times cited for crew changes and refueling are exaggerated. A crew change doesn’t need to take any more than ten minutes. We used to do it without even completely stopping sometimes.
Refueling shouldn’t take more than 1/2 hour if properly organized. Even less if done at a fueling station with multiple hose connections.
Haxn’t there been posts about the problems of refueling DPUs since their loocation is not fixed for a fuel pad ?. If the refueling location alllows front to pull DPUs to pad then that is not as much of a prolem.
Well if Biden’s EPA gets their wish a major pipeline going across Michigan for the last 50 years is going to be shutdown this winter. Hello to double the costs for fuel on things like heating oil gasoline diesel jet fuel let alone the inflation that will cause. They are pushing to close the Spire 5 pipeline across Michigan. Heck right now my drivers are having problems finding diesel fuel in certain areas.
That is exactly what CN is doing. They have a large solar array plant on their Alberta, Canada location. They said that they can use it to recharge the Flexdrive locomotive. Free electicity!!!
However not all engines are used in long-distance freight service. Many are used in yard switching or local switching, moving cars from a yard a few miles to an industry. New York Central was using battery powered engines a century (or more) ago, so I’d think there could be uses for hi-tech versions of them now?
If you’re talking about the 1525 class they where hybrids. They could draw power from either their 300 HP diesel engine their on board battery or the 3rd rail or some where equipped with a pantagraph for where they had access to one. All where scrapped after serving long lives. On their battery they could do 9 MPH on 3rd rail 18 and diesel power 40.
I think that they are meant to normally be recharged when in service through the use of dynamic braking, rather than stationary charging. The first generation design takes 8 hours, the second generation 4 hours for stationary charging.
Hydrogen fuel cell powered locomotives are the better option for road locomotives while battery locomotives would be best suited for yard work. Looking forward to seeing how CP does with their fuel cell test locomotive.
Interestingly, the article notes a five year life for road use, then conversion to other purposes such as electricity storage, then disposal after that secondary use remains undetermined at this time.
#1 The locomotive would have to be parked by a charging station during the daytime hours and run at night. OTOH, CN could invest in stationary battery storage to get more flexibility in time of charging.
#2 There’s a lot less sunlight during the winter in Alberta than in other parts of the year, solar plant capacity factors will be abysmal in wintertime. Even hydro power has problems with varyiations in rainfall and snowfall.
3 When cost of solar panels plus supporting structure for the panels plus power conversion plus grid connection costs plus maintennance costs are added up, solar ain’t free. This gets even worse if you need energy storage.
The Administration is studying Line 5. The Army Corps of Engineers is doing the environmental review (not the EPA). The Army Corps has already done earlier reviews in the Line 5 crossing at Mackinac Straits and gave no indication then that they were in favor of closing the line. They are doing the study because Canada has asked them to get involved in this international pipeline.
They say the ACOE is doing the Enviromential review for line 5. The EPA will be involved in this why they are the agency in the USA that controls the water quality in the nation. That and they can modify any regulations needed to shutdown the pipeline and get away with it. The railroads have seen this crap from them in the past. Remember what they did to EMD with the Tier 4 regulations. They literally changed the regulations that forced out the 710 prime mover.
My experience was that PHMSA handles pipelane regulation, USACE handles permitting on the bottomlands of the Great Lakes and navagable waters, and the Coast Guard handles spills there. EPA may have input on things like ship ballast permissable discharges, but I think the USCG still enforces those regulations. In any case it matters little which agency will have input into the Line 5 controversy, as any discretion they have is limited by the law which they cannot modify. As an example, the Dakota Access Pipeline was permitted during the Obama-Biden era, and was built thru occupying protest. (The neighboring Keystone XL pipeline is not an applicable example since permitting an international pipeline is a diplomatic and political decision.)
Just remember this about just how out of control some of the people the current administration has put into high level management positions. We have a Sec of Transportation that during this major supply chain crisis spent 2 months on vacation instead of trying to fix the problem. An energy secretary that has been quoted as saying she wants to kill all fossil fuel production in the USA. The head of the FMCSA to say they have zero clue on what the industry is about is an understatement. This person was the one that 5 year’s ago wanted a maximum of 8 hours of work per day in the OTR industry. Can you imagine just how screwed up the supply chain would have been if that was the rule right now.