Since it is in a consist with diesel-electric units I wonder if they may be part of the special paint news.
As seen in Newswire
It will be interesting to see whether Wabtec’s claim of a 30% increase in fuel efficiency within a consist is borne out. If that happens, we’ll be seeing a lot of these units.
https://wabtec-city.com/FLXDrive-Battery-Locomotive
“Flyer” from Wabtech states that only the four (4) of the six (6) axels will be powered.
So, my question becomes: powered axels arranged as A1A or 1B / B1?
Anyone know?
Think of this as a technology demonstrator for WABTEC more than a BNSF set. This is picking up on the promise of MATEs from lo! these many years ago, but now with proper hybrid energy storage.
Sadly the comments from Mr. Hamilton appear to confirm what I’d already suspected: the work GE did a decade ago into robust hybrid batteries has not panned out – or been developable into a ‘mass solution’ that is as cost-effective as current market traction-battery components.
I trust some of the lessons of earlier attempts are well understood, including charge-current and rate management, surges, and above all very good thermal management.
What might be fun would be to sandwich a couple of those Progress Rail PR43Cs around a battery MATE and dynamically adjust the fuel burn aggressively. Of course that’s NIH, but if the technological approach can be proven it might be interesting, particularly for revived dual-mode-lite, which is where I see the real value of this approach coming.
Four powered axels? Is this locomotive of Norwegian origin?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_jump
[:-^]
You were wise to spot this. Presumably the locomotive is being treated as a four-motor for good electrical reasons. Looking at the trucks in the illustration I’d think A-1-A, but this would be an ex-GE configuration, so more specific observation or technical description is needed.
This would be a perfect thing for Kalmbach to report on, with all the details and engineering assumptions asked about knowledgeably and then described coherently. Hit it, you guys!
Does anyone have any technical information the Flex-Drive locomotive. Horsepower and tractive effort rates, both starting and continuous?
Caldreamer
Some videos
In the five years before I retired from EMD in 2005, I was tasked with many special projects, one was to evaluate energy recovery and storage not long after the first Prius appeared. We contracted with the then retired programmer of the EMD train simulation program to include the capability to store dynamic brake energy on an SD70MAC for fuel savings. We looked a couple of scenarios, a Metra commuter train making all local stops from Chicago to Aurora and back and a loaded coal train from the Powder River basin to a powerplant in Texas and returning empties. We had realistic efficiences for energy conversion and included a storage capacity of 2 MW-hours, IIRC. The net fuel savings were in the range of 40% for the Metra train and about 16-20% for the coal train. At that time, Ni-MH was the best available battery, Li-Ion weren’t yet developed to the scale we needed. Though the fuel savings was substantial, the cost of the batteries and their life made it a loosing proposition. If they claim 30% fuel savings, it’s possible depending on a lot of factors, but whether it’s cost justified is a whole other matter. There may be reasons cost savings isn’t the driver though, perhaps it’s emissions in California.
Dave
I suspect the real reason Mr. Hamilton is making so much about the ‘automotive battery technology’ is that the expense of providing this very specific type of hardened and robust battery cell construction has been ‘costed down’ both in terms of the necessary technology and the construction and ongoing amortization of the facilities to produce it.
I’d be interested to read Mr. Goding’s opinion of the GE hybrid battery technology, which as I recall was one of the elevated-temperature chemistries like the old Ford sodium/sulfur battery. Those have taken on a potential new life with the advent over the past few years of really cheap, really good nanoinsulation. They also possess (in my opinion) an advantage in not requiring strategic materials ‘in demand for higher-profit applications’ or that are sourced from problem nations.
I’m interested also in seeing how the technology might be applied to wayside energy storage as well as onboard, where the necessary distribution overhead is or could be installed…
I believe this is the battery technology they were using on their hybrid locomotive from around 2008 which they planned to sell in 2010:
https://bioage.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c4fbe53ef013481117599970c-popup
The fact that this battery has an operating temperature of 270-350 degrees C is scary to me for a mobile use in the event of an accident although I would hope those working on it took safety very seriously. As I recall, GE made a PR splash as they were good at doing and got some government money to build their plant for these batteries near Schenectady that they eventually abandoned.
The one I was thinking of is this (scroll down to the links) produced as a case study by the multiphysics modeling company (COMSOL) GE used.
https://www.comsol.com/paper/rechargeable-battery-for-hybrid-diesel-electric-locomotive-6438
If you did not like nickel halide at 350 degrees I suspect you will not be any happier with sodium…
There are also the liquid-metal and semiliquid-metal constructions (which I have seen seriously proposed for heavy wayside storage) which use for example a liquid-calcium anode, antimony for the cathode, and molten salt electrolyte … now that is getting into McDonalds burn-hazard level!
The company I worked for from 1992 -2014 was part of GE at the time of their hybrid locomotive program. Recall that crude oil had gone over $100/bbl for the first time in 2008, so any fuel savings would have had a significant impact. IIRC, the battery had about a 2MW-hr capacity and about a 2MW power limit (i.e. 1C charge/discharge). The battery technology seemed a bit odd, possibly due to GRC’s NIH factor. Sodium Sulfur would be my pick for the ideal wayside/utility scale battery as sodium and sulfur are available in enormous quantities.
The 16% energy savings is pretty darn close to what the Milwaukee electrification did with regenerative braking.
A couple of thoughts about marketing hybrid locomotives:
Freight: Being able to run at full dbhp with batteries for a half hour or so could be extremely useful when running through long tunnels (e.g. Cascade). Wonder how much it would be worth to BNSF if they could significantly increase the number of trains through that tunnel.
Commuter: 40% energy saving sounds plausible, but what would be even nicer is adding the power from the batteries to the power from the prime mover in acceleration.
The immediate question this poses to me is whether operations of that kind might be better served with dual-mode-lite on the locomotives, and wayside power and catenary in the tunnel itself plus some distance either side for ‘downhill charging’. That would eliminate needing to size the traction batteries for the ‘whole’ of operation in the tunnel and would allow some development of ‘renewable power’ sources close to the tunnel (but perhaps remote from developed areas) to assist with the wayside baseline charge. I do not know whether Cascade still supports clearance for catenary at the desired voltage, but it might be relatively inexpensive to install it for the additional speed appropriate for ‘faster throughput’ of trains.
In fact, I suspect that with AC synthesized power, there would be comparably less ‘waste’ in rapid vs. regulated acceleration. The concern here would be (as with Tesla Ludicrous++) how much cumulative damage the battery pack takes from fast discharge and, to a lesser extent, rapid charge within the 80:20 limits I think apply to these batteries. As you know, I’m in favor of charge management using intermediate supercaps as ‘charge buffers’ between motors and chemical storage; that would be highly useful here.
I’m still wishing, though, that the benefits of wayside storage could be brought to bear on self-propelled commuter equipment. There are some interesting applications of KERS (one, I think, on the ex-Re
Dave -
Super interesting! I tried a back of the envelope estimate based on duty cycle and a SWAG on avg DB output. Here it is. I got 60,000 gallons out of about 300,000 total for locomotive per year. About 20%. Sorta close…
|
percent in db |
5% |
|
|
db hp |
2000 |
|
|
db fuel consumption |
10 |
gal/hr |
|
db hp-hr |
876000 |
|
|
generating efficiency |
30% |
|
|
HHV |
130000 |
BTU/gal |
|
HHV |
52 |
hp-hr/gal |
|
hp-hr |
2500 |
BTU |
|
fuel to generate DB HP-HRs |
& |
I suspect that there isn’t sufficient clearance for double stacks and the contact wire. One advantage off hybrid locomotives over electrification is that the capital costs are in mobile assets as opposed to fixed assets.
I recall reading that some versions of Lithium batteries (Li-Phosphate?) could hold up to as many charge/discharge cycles as a supercap provided that the state of charge was kept between 40% and 60%. My recollection was that the battery maker was also claiming specific power equivalent to supercaps. The batteries would have to sustain on the order of a hundred thousand cycles to make sense.
I’ve run through the numbers and supercaps are a bit shy of having the specific energy capacity (i.e. w-hr/kg) to work in commuter rail, but would work nicely for a hybrid switching locomotive. One advantage of batteries is keeping a relatively constant DC link voltage, while supercaps can be completely discharges without damage (safer to work around).
[quote]
I’m still wishing, though, that the benefits of wayside storage could be brought to
This is a thing, in fact I think there are suppliers who will sell you wayside power installations made this way.
Part of the argument made for the KERS setup is that it is vastly cheaper than the ‘equivalent’ in either high-capacity batteries or supercap banks, is immensely robust, has so long a lifetime without significant wear or necessary rebuilding as to make most renewable power sources seem short-lived, and for all intents and purposes have almost negligible parasitic loss, as spin down is relatively little in the time a given train dwells at the station concerned. As far as I know there were no showstopping problems with them.
My principal concern with regeneration via the car wheels is that you basically have most of the cost of a whole traction-motor system there, with the cost of what used to be a very expensive control system now almost commodity OTS electronics. You could almost rig one up to be driven from a smartphone with one of those model-railroading control setups… [:O]
Running some numbers…
Let’s assume that the commuter coach weighs 120,000lb and we want the traction motors on the car to provide 1mphps acceleration/braking effort up to 75mph with an equivalent provided by the hybrid locomotive.
1 mphps is about 0.05g, so we would need 6,000lbf tractive effort, so peak tractive power would be 6,000X(75/375)=1,200hp. With 4 axles, this would be 300hp/axle, which is on the high end for electric car motors. Use one electric car power package (battery, inverter and motor) per axle - assume we use a 75kwhr battery. Peak electric power will be 225kW, so peak charge/discharge rates will be 3C. With a combined locomotive and car acceleration rate of 2mphps, figure 40 seconds to get up to speed, that works out to 4.5MJ (1.25kwhr) per battery (about 2% change in depth of charge). With the “million-mile” battery technology coming real soon now, cycle life shouldn’t be an issue… (cough)
With specific energy of battery packs of 150w-hr/kg, we’d be looking at 4,500lb of batteries per car. Motors would be maybe another 1,200lb, figure equal amount for gearing and mounts and maybe 800lb for inverters for a total under 8,000lb.
Cost per power unit (battery, inverter and motor) may be $25,000, so we have $100,000/car. These weight and cost estimates are probably a bit optimistic.
One advantage of a power unit per axle is that a failure of the power unit leads to a 25% reduction in accelerating/braking power. The components, inlcuding the motors, are light enough to make swap-out relatively easy to do.
rdamon’s post; 1st video, Wabtech shows the three axle truck in the
A1A configuration …
(It also incorrectly uses the term “kW/Hr” when ther is no such thing… ypu have only kW or kWH…)
Well, there is the semantic possibility of using SI ‘by the book’ to say “kW/h” by analogy with units of distance…
The problem with using ‘watt-hour’ abbreviation is that it is carried over from the electric-power industry and is not remotely a ‘metric’ measurement quantity… in addition to which it is not perzackley equivalent to a metric conversion of ‘hp/hr’ as expected by locomotive people. The elephant-in-the-room problem, of course, is that the whole discussion should have begun with correct metric PREFIXES. Any practical discussion of locomotive output – as with comparable electric output – is in MW/h or MWh or whatever. To keep the single-horsepower conversion prefix in there is much like correcting to “raring” in the expression rarin’ to go without appreciating there is further context involved in the terminology…