[quote user=“oltmannd”]
I still wonder if these battery locomotives aren’t a way to back into full electrification.
[quote user=“oltmannd”]
Don = right on.
Still more a justification for a version of dual-mode lite that can use the battery to augment wayside storage, or work with partial cat whether or not hooked up to heavy traction grid resources ‘yet’ – or that can use partial cat or cables to do ‘plug-in charging’ when there is excess power or insufficient spot demand.
I’ll bet that the cost of 25 to 50kV transversion to DC-link voltage at ‘sufficient amperage capacity’ is really rather… lite. While there is more involved in ‘safe’ charging of restricted-voltage devices like super caps or many cell technologies, I suspect much of it is now well-developed and characterized, and probably costed-down in other contexts. We might have to get Don to revisit what his vision of the Middle or Pittsburgh Division in 2040 would look like with these…
Trip down Cajon Pass could fully charge several of these units for the trip to Long Beach …
I doubt they are. This is more to please California with a demonstration project. Since the state funded this project through a CARB grant. This is just to push another future government mandate without the market determining if this product is cost effective. While I’m a fan of electrification. We don’t need it for freight. GE’s first Hybrid Demo had it right by capturing DB energy, and storing it for additional power, or boosting the motors for acceleration… Battery powered switchers make more sense.
Reading between the lines, this is the logical follow-on to the GE hybrid, just with better packaging and control over the hybrid modes. It is only being touted as a ‘battery locomotive’ … when all its real advantages come as a combination MATE and electron-storage tender. (Prediction: Look for the other two TMs to be quietly refitted after the Californicatology is over… it will use them in either single or double unit consist pairing, and of course in dual-mode-lite. And the possibilities just in improving transient freight handling with distributed battery power are well worth the doing…
The problem with battery switchers is that no one seems to understand that they have to run in Ludicrous+ mode most of the time they accelerate, immediately followed by deep optimized dynamic braking with substantial inertial load. The active cooling requirements alone for this are on a scale I have not even seen suggested for switch engines; the necessary cell architecture for high peak currents are also dramatically more than ‘expected’.
I am frankly surprised Elon hasn’t gotten into this field; he ‘got’ it in the automotive context when no one else did…
I wonder how they would do in long haul serviece. For instance on the BNSF’s southern transcon from LA to Chicago which is over 2000 miles.
Very likely well; you’d have to look at a detailed grade profile and consider the actual consist resistance to see exactly how much. There are two broad classes of benefit: one being the ability to run in an average lower notch for overall fuel savings, and the other being reduction in pollution from being able to run the prime mover at constant speed/power for extended time and executing whatever engine speed or power changes might be needed both relatively slowly and with minimal imposed crank resistance to speed increase.