Interesting figures;keep in mind though that New England uses a significantly higher percentage of Natual Gas powered generation units than the rest of the country. The regulatory climate and public opinion in our region has been generally less favorable to new Nuclear and coal burning plants. A number of older thermal powerplants that previously burned coal and/or oil have been converted to gas fuel. There are only a handful of coal burning plants (Bow, NH; Chicopee, Ma; and Somerset, Ma.) operating in N.E nowadays.
I was hoping for some solid economic / engineering analysis, but instead, the article strikes me as being written by a left-wing politician with the usual crisis mongering about crumbling infrastructure, climate change, running out of oil, highway congestion, and the need for public investment to fix everything. As greyhounds mentioned, the article does not say where the new supply of electricity will come from, and we have been discussing how it cannot come from coal or nuclear power unless we have a sea change in national policy.
However the author of the article makes it loud and clear by strong implication at least, that the new energy will come from renewables such as wind and solar. In fact, I get the impression that the author would not have it any other way, and is in total agreement with those who want to phase out coal and become green.
To support a case for electrification, author Lothes suggest that it might be the only alternative should a state or local district suddenly outlaw diesels, based on some perceived threat. He asks: “What might happen if, say, the city of Los Angeles or the entire state of California decided to ban diesel locomotive emissions?” My answer to that questio
Another short article on electrification.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1215/is_9_209/ai_n29476448/?tag=content;col1
Jeff
Not Nuclear or Coal power, but rather Natural Gas for fuel. Perhaps what will happen is a back to the future with more locomotives like the 4 BN SD40-2s towing a tankcar with CNG or similar.
At the risk of repeating myself natural gas is a feedstock in producing synthetic diesel fuel. That way you only have to build the plant and leave all the railroad equipment as it is. Another thing is that coal fired plants instead of putting scrubbers on their smoke stack convert the incoming coal to synfuel and send it straight to the boilers.
The problem with renewables as Boone Pickens is finding out after spending lots of money on Turbines is lack of transmission lines. I think the transmission lines we have currently waste a lot of electricity in transmission, so they need to be reworked. Of course the railways will offer their right of way for them if they can also draw from the current. Problem there is the Nimby’s are not going to approve of the huge towers in their backyard unless the lines can be buried (very expensive)…I don’t see this happening. Seems to me that railroad electrification in urban areas at least probably won’t happen anytime soon. Maybe out West in isolated areas like the Powder RIver Basin?. It’s nice to dream but we are at least 20-30 years away from any major effort to electrify our countries railways without any Federal Support.
BTW, large wind turbine farm going up in Indiana along I-65 between Chicago and Louisville. Pretty impressive to see.
Follow along with T. Boone Pickens…Power interstate trucking with natural gas…Perhaps power railroad engine units with it too.
Power producing wind farms are being built every day across this nation and all of a sudden they too, will be adding to the generating capacity of producing power for all kinds of needs in this country, including areas where railroad electrification is more efficient.
Your concerns are more or less valid. My understanding is that most electrification studies assume that the wires need to clear a doublestack train (this was the assumption when the Southern California Regional Railraod Authority was looking into the matter in 1991-92).
As for your concern #3, don’t forget overpass clearances, this was estimated to be half the cost of the proposed southern California electrification.
Except for at least Norfolk Southern’s /former Southern Rwy. CNO&TP subsidiary’s former ‘Rathole’ route from Cincinnati to Chattanooga. I understand that during the early 1960’s improvement project, clearances were increased to 30 feet - including through all the tunnels - against just this possibility.
As to power supplies: Most power systems and plants have daily demand peaks during the afternoon, and lulls overnight. There’s lots of surplus generating capacity available then, and hence very cheaply, too - just look up the hourly spot market quotes from, say, the PJM Regional Transmission Operator/ grid. A main reason is that - unlike the combustion turbines - the big thermal/ coal plants can’t be cycled to start up and shut down each day - essentially they have to be kept ‘hot’ and spinning overnight. So to produce a little more electricity then is generally no problem at all - in fact, that would put to a productive use a capacity that would otherwise be wasted - a ‘lost opportunity’ cost. For more information and details, consult ‘The magazine of Generation’ [whatever that publication may may be [;)] ]. In many instances - but not all, certainly - the peak time for mainline railroad movements is also during the overnight hours, so here may be a possible fortunate coincidence of need and supply.
I have a simple question:
If all the railroads in the U.S. were electrified today, how much power would that require compared to the amount of electric power actually consumed today.
Power to run all railroads today = _____% of power actually consumed today.
ALL the railroads? But quite a few of them already are electric, particularly transit. How about we just take the Class 1 freight operations. Data for 2008 is not yet available, so I will use 2007:
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Class 1 freight consumed 566.9 trillion BTU
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The U.S. generated 4,156,745 thousand megawatt-hours
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That equates to 14,183 trillion BTU equivalent
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That equates to 3.99 percent.
In other words, to electrify all freight operations of all U.S. Class 1 railroads, it would require a generation increase of 4 percent. That kind of spare capacity exists, but often it is not in the right place at the right time. The problem is mostly one of transmission, storage, and reliability. In some cases it may be less expensive to build new generation capacity at a specific location than to build new transmission lines, but that is not a “lack of generation capacity” problem per se.
(Note – adding in all the passenger operations, including intercity, commuter, and transit, increases the BTU consumption from 566.9 trillion to 657.5 trillion)
RWM
Simple question - and a good one, which will go a long ways towards settling this aspect of the issue, though perhaps it gets a complicated answer - but here’s tan answer for a good start - the details follow:
Power to run all railroads today = approx. 1.38 % of power actually consumed today. [computed on an annual basis]
I have read that both China and India are electrifying freightlines with sufficient clearances for doublestacks (granted IINM they use “international” boxes which are slightly less tall than Domestic North American containers). I am not aware on any technical reasons that it couldn’t be done although I’m certain that the costs increase quite a bit.
Lest anyone think I didn’t notice - while I was working on my lengthy post above, RWM put together and posted his, and has an answer that’s larger than mine by a factor of about 3 - 3.99 % vs. 1.38 %. I’ve reviewed both calculations and attempted to replicate his - and have been successful to some degree - but the source of that difference isn’t jumping out at me just yet. Maybe I’ll take another look at it later today - anyone who feels like it in the meanwhile, feel free go ahead and work through it. [Bubba Justin, here’s a real-life math problem for you . . . [:-,] ]
In the meantime, I think either answer is essentially the same and ‘works’ for Bucyrus and the conclusion for the limited purpose of this discussion - that electrifying the railroads isn’t going to seriously tax the nation’s overall generating capacity.
- Paul North.
Paul, I think your numbers might be OK in relation to total U.S. energy consumption but I just looked at electricity, which is what I think Bucyrus was asking. Also, I go into exercises like this about once a month in the real job, so I have a lot of familiarity with the source data. That familiarity enabled me to do mine using a simpler pathway, I think.
As I look at it again, I found another table that quantifies consumption rather than generation, which accounts for electricity transmission losses and imports, which I knew I had left out previously. But electric imports aren’t huge so I didn’t worry too much about it; and, Bucyrus was asking about electric generating capacity and I have no idea what kind of transmission losses railway electrification might entail, so that’s probably not an apples-to-apples comparison anyway.
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Go here for Class I energy consumption: http://cta.ornl.gov/data/chapter2.shtml (use Table 2.6)
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Go here for domestic electricity generation: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html
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Go here for domestic electricity consumption: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2_11.pdf
RWM
Paul and RWM,
Since we have been talking about the difficulty of building new coal-fired power plants being an impediment to railroad electrification, I just wanted to get an idea of how much additional electricity would be needed to electrify the railroads on a comprehensive basis. I had no idea whether the number was 10% or 75%. So, with both of your numbers being under 5%, it puts the matter in good perspective, even though your numbers differ a bit.
There is a lot of research going on right now on nucliar generation that will probably cut costs, increase safety, greatly diminish nuclear waste, much of it being conducted at MIT. I think this becoming successful and the use of railroad rights-of-way for power transmission lines, will lead to successful railway electrification some time in the future. There is also no reason why an old diesel with a worn out prime mover, but a good frame cab, trucks, traction motors, and blowers, cannot be rebuilt into a straight electric at substantially less cost than a new straight electric.
Bucyrus - Given the trend in natural gas prices (down) and supply (up), the limitations in the transmission system, and the ability of gas turbines to spool up quickly and act as peaking plants, if one were thinking about electrifying vast swaths of the freight rail system, I think that there would be some new natural gas generation plants and not one new coal plant.
RWM
The diesel-electric can be rebuilt, but I think it will still be significantly cheaper to build new locomotives rather than trying to convert and rebuild. A locomotive is an integrated engineering package, not a collection of components haphazardly thrown together like a buffet plate. To gain efficiency, reliability, availability, and low maintenance and operating costs, a locomotive needs an integrated design. You can make anything work, after a fashion, with non-purpose built components, but it will do for $2 what a clean-paper design can do for $1.
RWM