Firms develop new tech to electrify trains

Every day, thousands of southwest-bound passengers on trains leaving Aldershot station pass by a bank of solar panels located next to the tracks. Few, if any, may notice the installation. But the train they are traveling on draws energy from it.

“On a sunny day, if you take a train through Aldershot, some of the power for that train will come from those solar panels,” says Leo Murray, co-founder and chief executive of Riding Sunbeams, a startup that aims to use renewable energy for railway electrification projects.

Horse riding in the sunshine built the Aldershot massif in 2019 . It is small in size, at just 40 kilowatts, which is equivalent to about 10 rooftop solar panels found in a typical UK home. But it demonstrates how renewable energy can be supplied directly to railways.

Not only that, Mr Murray says it is currently the only solar array in the country that supplies electricity directly to the railways to run trains. “If you're a railroad company, this is the cheapest electricity you can buy,” he adds.

Across the country and around the world, many trains still run on diesel, a fossil fuel. To go electric, rail operators have traditionally had two options: electrified rail or overhead lines to which trains connect. hand shaped pantographs on their roofs. Installing any of these systems can be expensive and technically challenging.

But engineers are working on new ways to implement such technologies, and completely different alternatives are emerging that could speed up electrification projects.

A key barrier to electrification is often the limitations of the local power grid. difficult to access to a large connection to power your trains. “This problem has gotten much, much worse,” Mr Murray says.

That's why he sees solar panels as so useful for railroad electrification projects.

Mr Murray says that after the Aldershot project he hoped Riding Sunbeams would go ahead with a full-scale commercial pilot. But funding problems got in the way.

However, Network Rail, which owns and maintains the UK's rail infrastructure, is now looking for suppliers for renewable energy projects in railway transport.

“This is a very important question,” says Mr. Murray, explaining that his company plans to bid for the contract.

However, new projects bring new challenges. In Aldershot the track was already electrified – solar panels had to be connected to the existing system.

But for trains that switch off diesel and switch to overhead lines, using solar power is more difficult. This is because solar panels produce direct current (DC) electricity, while overhead lines use alternating current (AC).

Efforts are underway in England to develop new converter device although this might solve the problem.

In addition, Colton Junction between Leeds and York, the fastest rail junction in the UK with trains reaching speeds of up to 125mph, has recently been electrified using software developed at the University of Huddersfield.

The software creates a 3D model of an overhead line system, allowing engineers to plan its construction in great detail, reducing costs by eliminating the need for certain forms of traditional testing and evaluation.

“Everything was specified in the software in terms of measurements,” says João Pombo, deputy director of the university’s Institute of Railway Research. “Since August, all trains have been running at maximum speed at this junction.”

But there are completely different ideas for electrification. Polish startup Nevomo has developed an electromagnetic propulsion system. It's modernized onto the existing rails by inserting a thick aluminum cable into the guard that runs between the rails. This creates a magnetic field strong enough to propel freight cars equipped with magnets.

“We're moving away from locomotives entirely,” says Ben Pacek, founder and CEO. “Each carriage becomes independent. They can also act in groups.”

According to Mr. Pacek, a key advantage of this technology is that it allows operators to stop freight cars very quickly – and as a result, this means that they can, in principle, safely place many independently moving cars relatively close to each other on the same section of the railway, increasing the density of freight traffic on a given section.

Nevomo hopes to roll out its technology at a steel plant in Bremen, Germany, and at a port in India next year.

They will be relatively small in scale, each covering a distance of less than 1 km (0.6 mi). But Mr. Pacek hopes to see larger facilities in the future. “In a conservative environment like the railroad, we need to demonstrate this well first.”

It would be possible to automate the movement of electromagnetically driven cars, he adds, although initially they would be controlled remotely by human operators.

In the US, Parallel Systems is also working on electrifying individual freight cars so that they can move independently on the rail network, but in a very different way, using batteries. According to co-founder and CEO Matt Soule, the company's cars will have a range of 800 km.

He describes it as moving packages around a distribution center—“atomized freight”—quite unlike the traditional locomotive-hauled freight trains that can be more than 2 km in length. “We're focused on the shorter things that they don't do,” Mr. Soule says.

He adds that his goal is not to replace freight locomotives, but rather to offer a rail delivery service that could compete with trucking. “If we just capture 10% of the freight market, we'll double the rail industry,” he says.

Stuart Hillmansen from the University of Birmingham, who has worked with Riding Sunbeams in the past, says running individual freight trains on the existing rail network can be “quite challenging – especially on [British] railways.”

But he says new technologies are helping to make electrification easier – and that electrified trains in general are now the most suitable option for new railways.

“All of these technologies are physically feasible and can work, it’s just a matter of driving the business case,” he says.