A 42 MW solar park is being built in eastern Germany to help power rail lines.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn and solar project developer Enerparc have signed a contract for construction of a 42 MW solar power plant in Wasbek, in Schleswig-Holstein, eastern Germany.
The solar power generated will be fed directly into Deutsche Bahn’s 16.7 Hz rail network via a converter plant in Neumünster.
Enerparc told pv magazine the solar plant is expected to generate around 38 GWh of electricity per year.
Local authorities are still considering a land use permit request for the facility, said Enerparc, with construction ready to start if the permit is approved.
Deutsche Bahn wants to increase the volume of clean energy in its power mix to 61% this year, with the aim of powering the entire rail network from renewables by 2038.
emphasis added
(The Netherlands already contracts for enough wind power to cover the total power needs of their electrified lines.)
England is getting into solar-powered rail too. It doesn’t look like trains yet, but the infrastructure is getting a boost.
Some trains in the UK are now running on a rail line powered entirely by a solar farm in what's said to be a world first. Around 100 panels are keeping the signaling and lights up and running on the track near Aldershot in Hampshire, and the project could be a precursor to solar-powered trains on the nation's network.
Several UK train stations already run on solar. Network Rail, which manages most of the railway infrastructure on the British mainland, has earmarked billions of pounds to electrify rail lines, and aims to do so with solar power if the pilot project is successful. The UK government aims to eliminate the use of diesel on the rail network by 2040.
India is planning to electrify its railways. While it’s not clear how much of the power will come from fossil fuels yet, it will make the switch to clean energy much easier while also making the rail lines more energy efficient.
Indian Railways, country’s national carrier, is taking steps to minimise carbon footprint by reducing the number of trains running on diesel and to fully bring the network to run with electric locomotives.
As on 01 November 2019, 37,237 route kilometers of rail lines have been commissioned on electric traction, which is 57.91% of total Indian Railways’ broad gauge network. Indian railways has also prepared an action plan to electrify the remaining broad gauge (BG) routes.
They’re already recycling diesel locomotives into electric locomotives. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. Diesel locomotives use electric motors in their trucks to turn their wheels. The electricity comes from a Diesel engine powering a generator — in effect, they’re hybrids. Rebuilding them to take electricity from overhead lines (catenary) is not that big of a leap.
And in America?
A fixation on High Speed Rail ignores the real differences that could be made on a larger scale across the nation’s rail network with the kind of investments above. While investing in newer high speed train sets is a good thing, it’s only one small part of the bigger picture. Railroads in America could be part of the climate solution. Instead they’re the problem — the Big Four anyway.
The four largest American freight railroads—BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, and CSX—have sat at the center of the climate-denial movement nearly since it began, documents and studies show. These four companies have joined or funded groups that attacked individual scientists, cast doubt on scientific consensus, and rejected reports from major scientific institutions, including the United Nations–led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their effort has cost at least tens of millions of dollars and outlasted individual leaders and coalitions.
The reason? They make a major part of their money shipping coal and oil. They are pretty much locked into shipping bulk commodities and unit trains — they can’t compete against truckers running on taxpayer supported highways. The latest business fad is making things worse: Precision Scheduled Railroading. It’s all about the operating ratio — how much it costs to make every dollar they earn, and how much can be turned over to Wall Street.
PSR is nothing more than what many industry observers call “vulture capitalism,” with good reason. Hedge fund investors swoop into a company and drive down operating costs in order to wring out every possible dime in profits, but don’t share those profits with the workers who created them. They buy back stock to pump up the price, and when they run out of cash, they borrow against the company’s assets to buy back more stock and pump up the prices some more. At the same time, operational downsizing cuts are removing much more than “fat.” They cut into the muscle and bone of the operation and are much harder to repair when the hedge fund investors move on to greener pastures.
How does it look in practice? Fewer jobs, worse working conditions, safety issues, deteriorating service for shippers, longer trains, slower trains. From the Wall Street Journal:
Union Pacific Corp. UNP -0.81% plans to run its railroad with nearly 3,000 fewer workers this year as the company pushes ahead with a new operating plan that runs fewer, longer trains.
The Omaha, Neb.-based company said it plans to reduce its average number of workers by around 8% in 2020 after reducing its staffing by 11% in 2019. The railroad averaged around 37,500 workers during 2019 and nearly 42,000 during 2018….
...Rival CSX Corp., which operates in the eastern U.S. and is further along in implementing precision-scheduled railroading, ended 2019 with about 20,900 people, nearly 1,600 fewer jobs than the previous year. It had 27,000 in December 2016 before the late Hunter Harrison was named CEO and revamped the company.
The difference between what is happening with railroads elsewhere in the world and what is happening in America is due to one key element: the role government plays in railroading and the policies it imposes. The Big Four are all private. They work to keep Wall Street happy, not Main Street. Railroads are regulated monopolies, trading the power they have as monopolies against the needs of the public. The balance needs to be adjusted to reflect the world we are living in and what we need going forward.
I’m working with Solutionary Rail to address that, turning America’s railroads from a liability into an asset in the climate crisis and a key part of a 21st century economy. A briefing to the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in Washington has led to what we’re calling the Moonshot Modeshift. It’s a rejection of PSR and the blind obedience to market forces that are driving us over the climate cliff. It’s a huge proposal, and its name is inspired by the effort that got us to the Moon in less than 10 years. I will have much more to say about it in a followup post.
Solutionary Rail has been evolving as we have been developing our knowledge base. Our original focus was on investing in electrifying the nation’s rail corridors and powering them with clean energy from wind and solar power. That investment would also utilize the rail corridors as transmission corridors to connect that clean power to the rest of the country; there’s a lot of untapped wind and solar potential waiting out there. Along with that would be track upgrades to allow for higher conventional rail speeds for both passenger and freight service, along with restoring service to communities that have been left stranded.
We still see that as the future, but the Moonshot Modeshift is something we can get started on now even as we work towards the rest. The short version is this: we have to start shifting freight from roads to rails as quickly as possible. Time is running out; we have a lot of catching up to do. The rest of the world is not waiting for us. We can be part of the solution, or we can continue to be a big part of the problem.
Here’s the video of where we’d like to get to, what it will gain us, and why we need to do this. At about the 2 minute mark, you can see just how much impact changing the way the Big Four railroads operate could have; they cover the lower 48 coast to coast. You can download our ebook for free using the coupon code 4WRD2GTHR
Let me know in comments or message me if you have questions. You can find a lot at the Solutionary Rail site — our Railbites have some quick takeaway news.
