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“World’s First Solar-Powered Train” Is in Reality a Battery-Powered Train

8 points by ant6n 9y ago

CharlesW 9y ago
Except that batteries don't generate power. The author goes on to point out that all of the power used by the train is indeed solar-generated, provided by a combination of onboard panels and a solar power plant at its station.
- pluto9 9y ago
  Yeah, this guy seems to be looking for a controversy. Nobody ever said the train's power system is self-contained. In fact, the article he references as claiming that it's the "world-first truly solar train" makes numerous references to the train being charged by the station.
- ant6n 9y ago
  Author here: maybe the tone is too controversial. That wasn't really intended as such. I'll try to tone it down. My twitter was full of 'first solar train' posts, always with the image showing the solar panels on top of the train. I found that the various posts don't make it very obvious where the power for this train is really coming from, implying it's from the panels on top of the train. My overarching point is that roof-top solar-powered trains are not really possible -- unless you spend most of the time standing still. And that the real innovation in this concept is to power a train by battery, which is something that has had few working implementations and may have a huge impact.
matthiasl 9y ago
Would be nice to fix the units in the article. In the 'fact sheet' box, the only correctly abbreviated unit is the 'km'. Every 'KWh' should be 'kWh', i.e. kilo and not Kelvin. Similarly, footnote 1 uses both kwh and KWh, neither of which are right. The numbers in the box are interesting, especially since I can't find them on the train's official site (where did they come from?). The last row in the 'fact sheet' box says "Power of solar plant at station: 30Kwh". Should that be 30 kW? Or is there a battery at the station as well, in which case the text should probably be different. The train's own website (second link in the blog post) doesn't mention a battery at the station and refers to the connection to the grid as "just like a bank", which makes me think that the train is solar powered in a 'bookkeeping' sense. Another nit is that San Francisco has "solar insolation" and not "insulation".
- ant6n 9y ago
  fixed the typos, thanks. Various numbers in the box are links to articles where they are in the text.
  - matthiasl 9y ago
    It's changed, but not correct. Currently, all the units in the 'fact box' are KWh. That is "Kelvin Watt hours", which makes no sense. You want kWh, i.e. lower case 'k', upper case 'W', lower case 'h'. Wikipedia has a reasonable article explaining that 'K' is Kelvin and 'k' is the prefix for 10^3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units Same problem in the footnotes, though MWh is correct, so that's good.
    - ant6n 9y ago
      Fair enough. I hope that one day, you'll Win the war against Incorrectly capitalized physical Units that still make sense Due to Context. :-)
featherverse 9y ago
This article is stupid. If solar powered anythings weren't operating from batteries then they'd stop working when the sky becomes cloudy. Gasoline engines operate from batteries too. The premise of the blog post is so incredibly stupid that I am forced to question the intelligence of the author. For that matter why was it posted to HN? It doesn't offer anything of real value, is this karma whoring?

8 points by ant6n 9y ago

Except that batteries don't generate power. The author goes on to point out that all of the power used by the train is indeed solar-generated, provided by a combination of onboard panels and a solar power plant at its station.

pluto9 9y ago
Yeah, this guy seems to be looking for a controversy. Nobody ever said the train's power system is self-contained. In fact, the article he references as claiming that it's the "world-first truly solar train" makes numerous references to the train being charged by the station.
ant6n 9y ago
Author here: maybe the tone is too controversial. That wasn't really intended as such. I'll try to tone it down. My twitter was full of 'first solar train' posts, always with the image showing the solar panels on top of the train. I found that the various posts don't make it very obvious where the power for this train is really coming from, implying it's from the panels on top of the train. My overarching point is that roof-top solar-powered trains are not really possible -- unless you spend most of the time standing still. And that the real innovation in this concept is to power a train by battery, which is something that has had few working implementations and may have a huge impact.

matthiasl 9y ago

Would be nice to fix the units in the article. In the 'fact sheet' box, the only correctly abbreviated unit is the 'km'. Every 'KWh' should be 'kWh', i.e. kilo and not Kelvin. Similarly, footnote 1 uses both kwh and KWh, neither of which are right. The numbers in the box are interesting, especially since I can't find them on the train's official site (where did they come from?). The last row in the 'fact sheet' box says "Power of solar plant at station: 30Kwh". Should that be 30 kW? Or is there a battery at the station as well, in which case the text should probably be different. The train's own website (second link in the blog post) doesn't mention a battery at the station and refers to the connection to the grid as "just like a bank", which makes me think that the train is solar powered in a 'bookkeeping' sense. Another nit is that San Francisco has "solar insolation" and not "insulation".

ant6n 9y ago
fixed the typos, thanks. Various numbers in the box are links to articles where they are in the text.
- matthiasl 9y ago
  It's changed, but not correct. Currently, all the units in the 'fact box' are KWh. That is "Kelvin Watt hours", which makes no sense. You want kWh, i.e. lower case 'k', upper case 'W', lower case 'h'. Wikipedia has a reasonable article explaining that 'K' is Kelvin and 'k' is the prefix for 10^3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units Same problem in the footnotes, though MWh is correct, so that's good.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    Fair enough. I hope that one day, you'll Win the war against Incorrectly capitalized physical Units that still make sense Due to Context. :-)

featherverse 9y ago

This article is stupid. If solar powered anythings weren't operating from batteries then they'd stop working when the sky becomes cloudy. Gasoline engines operate from batteries too. The premise of the blog post is so incredibly stupid that I am forced to question the intelligence of the author. For that matter why was it posted to HN? It doesn't offer anything of real value, is this karma whoring?