4 ms·

Seems very cool, maybe a bit of a game changing paradigm? - solar over day slowly charges batteries in train cars (easy to add, weight issue is trivial) - tra

Seems very cool, maybe a bit of a game changing paradigm? - solar over day slowly charges batteries in train cars (easy to add, weight issue is trivial) - train cars dynamically dispatched during night in response to pretty granular JIT demand for next day - everything can be slow and maximally efficient, the charging, the trains themselves Seems like potential to cut costs by a lot and enable new usecases

Bengalilol 1y ago
Or: electrify the trains and connect them to the grid. It will be more resilient and less constraining. At least, one could say: let's occupy the available space between the tracks to produce some energy (https://www.sun-ways.ch/en https://www.sun-ways.ch/en). At least...
- clickety_clack 1y ago
  That’s what I initially thought, but I could see it being cheaper for the railway company to build solar for themselves. They get the power at cost, and can build a system that can handle lower uptime/greater availability, with storage etc, so that they can avoid paying to upkeep high availability power. I don’t know though. I assume someone with a really nice spreadsheet has looked at this before deciding to pay to build all this.
- davnicwil 1y ago
  I would think a huge additional advantage of this solar and on-car batteries combo would be resiliency to single points of failure and massive long term savings in infra and power costs?
georgefrowny 1y ago
> easy to add Trains are famously risk-averse designs. They're also really expensive and have to work for decades. It will be hard sell to convince a train operator that adding literal tonnes of batteries to a train with a complicated mesh of solar microforms spread over thousands of km of track will be a good deal in terms of regulatory approval, cost effectiveness, maintenance overheads in time and money and that your company will still be around in 20 years to run the system rather than going belly up in a tech crash and leaving them with a bunch of bricked hardware.
- davnicwil 1y ago
  Why should this setup be locked in to any particular third party company? How different is it to the train cars themselves being built by some company and then maintained by train company mechanics? And battery + electric motor setups are famously pretty straightforward, so this seems even more true. I don't disagree on the regulatory stuff being an issue, that's a very good point. The solar mesh feels like an orthogonal problem, also feels very solvable with just standard interfaces which would surely be mandated. I mean the solar bit is an add on too, you can always fall back to other means for battery charging, but seems like solar is just an obvious economically optimal solution in the circumstances.
- orwin 1y ago
  The new TGV-M already have batteries inside. When you have an issue with the catenary for any reason, the batteries can help keep the train momentum without risks, or if the train had to stop, allow you to start from 0kmh to 80kmh and keep the speed for 5 hours, with air conditioning and all. Your 2 hour trip now last 5 hours, but still. And since in my country every 10 km on major lines you have a "different" catenary circuit, the 80km/h speed will probably last 15 minutes and you can go back to 280 fast enough. I think the first was deployed this year, it it will be be available to export in 2-3 years.

Bengalilol 1y ago

Or: electrify the trains and connect them to the grid. It will be more resilient and less constraining. At least, one could say: let's occupy the available space between the tracks to produce some energy (https://www.sun-ways.ch/en https://www.sun-ways.ch/en). At least...

clickety_clack 1y ago
That’s what I initially thought, but I could see it being cheaper for the railway company to build solar for themselves. They get the power at cost, and can build a system that can handle lower uptime/greater availability, with storage etc, so that they can avoid paying to upkeep high availability power. I don’t know though. I assume someone with a really nice spreadsheet has looked at this before deciding to pay to build all this.
davnicwil 1y ago
I would think a huge additional advantage of this solar and on-car batteries combo would be resiliency to single points of failure and massive long term savings in infra and power costs?

georgefrowny 1y ago

> easy to add Trains are famously risk-averse designs. They're also really expensive and have to work for decades. It will be hard sell to convince a train operator that adding literal tonnes of batteries to a train with a complicated mesh of solar microforms spread over thousands of km of track will be a good deal in terms of regulatory approval, cost effectiveness, maintenance overheads in time and money and that your company will still be around in 20 years to run the system rather than going belly up in a tech crash and leaving them with a bunch of bricked hardware.

davnicwil 1y ago
Why should this setup be locked in to any particular third party company? How different is it to the train cars themselves being built by some company and then maintained by train company mechanics? And battery + electric motor setups are famously pretty straightforward, so this seems even more true. I don't disagree on the regulatory stuff being an issue, that's a very good point. The solar mesh feels like an orthogonal problem, also feels very solvable with just standard interfaces which would surely be mandated. I mean the solar bit is an add on too, you can always fall back to other means for battery charging, but seems like solar is just an obvious economically optimal solution in the circumstances.
orwin 1y ago
The new TGV-M already have batteries inside. When you have an issue with the catenary for any reason, the batteries can help keep the train momentum without risks, or if the train had to stop, allow you to start from 0kmh to 80kmh and keep the speed for 5 hours, with air conditioning and all. Your 2 hour trip now last 5 hours, but still. And since in my country every 10 km on major lines you have a "different" catenary circuit, the 80km/h speed will probably last 15 minutes and you can go back to 280 fast enough. I think the first was deployed this year, it it will be be available to export in 2-3 years.