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And energy transportation.
by stephengillie 11y ago
And energy transportation.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoYes, agreed. That can be solved with transmission lines, we just need to start building them. Curious. Could we build transmission lines over existing freight tracks across the US? And have them serve double-duty? Both transporting power up top at very high voltages, and down below providing traction power to locomotives?
- stephengillie 11y agoI saw another post in an HN thread today - it reminded me that sending electricity by wire over long distances is costly - you use something like 1% of the electrical load for every kilometer you send it. With that kind of efficiency, I'm wondering how much energy it would take to ship a container of batteries across the country - how many kWh could you store in 45,000 lbs of lithium? That might be explosive or otherwise prohibitive, so what about 45,000 lbs of nickel cadmium? Maybe we've been looking at energy transmission backwards, and we should be shipping it the way we ship everything else? And if we put the container on your train, it could power the train too.