022-01-29# Quick Note: California Gets Electrification Wrong
Caltrans has a new plan to make its intercity rail fleet zero-emission. The snag: it rejects electrification as infeasible and is instead looking for hydrogen fuel cell trains. I do not think any of the people who were involved in this study is competent enough to keep working in this field, and it’s important to explain why.
I refer readers to the electrification report we at TransitMatters put out a few months ago. It talks about the costs and benefits of overhead wire, and goes over some case studies of some electrification projects, some good (Trondheim), some okay (Israel, Denmark), and some examples of what not to do (Caltrain, Toronto). Since then I’ve seen additional data of electrification costs out of Italy, where they’re near the bottom of our range.
I find it hard to believe that someone who writes for TransitMatters would accuse Caltrans of not comprehending the value of catenary electrification, or understanding the costs and pitfalls of implementing it, since the ‘peninsula’ service has been electrified within recent years.
ZEHTRANS is a political presentation, in line with other ‘zero carbon’ virtue signaling in recent years, and I think if it is to be read as an implementable policy document it should contain full discussion of the hydrogen-sourcing infrastructure that has been so integral and vital a part of the European ‘battery-hybrid’ schemes.
ASSuming the hydrogen infrastructure to support appropriate service is put in place (presumably piggybacking and expanding on the existing California vehicle hydrogen infrastructure, which ought to be happening for other reasons already) it would be a comparatively simple matter for a company like RPS to put a few Ballard cells in with its battery infrastructure to provide intercity-capable power. It would be trivial to make this dual-mode-lite, which provides an easy and modular route to catenary or smart third rail anywhere those technologies find support – ultimately reaching the level where full route electrification can be achieved, or supporting largely electrified systems with gaps or branches not economically electrified even with Phoenix-style automation of infrastructure installation.
The people who need to be ‘replaced’ in California are the consultants that exploit the California political environment. Streamline the procedures for environmental analysis. Implement the same kinds of equipment for catenary that we have for TLMs. If a fleet of vehicles needs to be built in the next few years, make it self-propelled with a bridge toward progressive electrification… not all or nothing.
As far as i understand Cat wire has been buil but not but it has taken since 1995 and multiple lawsuits later to get anything working. California in the 2000s is not the Roaring 1920s when private railroads got stuff done like Pennsy Electrification
An anectdote from the 1991-92 hearings on electrifying the freight railroads in the SoCal air basin. The estimated cost of the project hit $4B and then someone suggested fuel cells would be the answer. This brings up the question of how many fuel cell powered freight locomotives have been built in the last 30 years?
To be practical, a fuel cell powered MU car would need a hybrid power source with the fuel cells providing long term power and the batteries providing acceleration and deceleration (regenerative braking).
One joker in the deck is that “Medium Voltage” (3kV to 15kV) DC electrifications are being developed as advances in power electronics make DC/DC converters that are substantially lighter than a 60Hz transformer.
Starting to see the adoption of HVDC (High-Voltage DC) in the data center and the wide-area networks. Where HV in this case means in comparison to -48V DC and is up to +/- 380VDC. This is due to the advancements in DC-DC converters and allows for the removal of the inverters in the UPS System and the use of smaller wire to the equipment.
Cat wire means that you could use a variety of equipment from single engines to MU Mutiple Unit “Silverliners”. Retrogen braking means that you can feed energy back into the system. The real story here is that living next to a high speed high frequency service line changes the population thus the political landscape
380VDC for data centers has been around for a few years now. AC power is converted to 380VDC which is then used to float charge batteries as well as being distributed to the various racks. FWIW, 380V is not much higher that the typical power factor correcting AC/DC converter front end, so it wasn’t as big of a change as one might expect. The new SiC and GaN power devices helping improve efficiency of the high voltage DC/DC converters.
While I haven’t seen much coverage recently of distribution voltage power electronics, I do remember a few articles ca 2014 about experimental high frequency distribution transformers using experimental 10 to 14kV rated SiCFET’s.
There’s one outfit in Poland that has been making traction inverters that run off of 3kVDC catenary - would have been a nice solution for traction power had the D&LW 3kV commuter electrification not been switched to 60Hz. IIRC, they were using 6.5kV rated silicon IGBT’s.