[HN Gopher] Rail company that launched first H2 line opts for al...
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Rail company that launched first H2 line opts for all-electric
future
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-08-03 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hydrogeninsight.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hydrogeninsight.com)
| thriftwy wrote:
| What's so hard about having overhead wires?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There's a lot of folks with a vested interest in pushing a
| hydrogen future (market participants who will see financial
| loss as fossil fuel use declines, natural gas infra, automakers
| who are trying to cling to non battery platforms), so it takes
| orders of magnitude of additional effort to bring folks back to
| boring, reliable tech (overhead wires or charging points) and
| batteries versus the "innovator hand wave" of various colors of
| hydrogen marketing (green, blue).
|
| Building new catenary systems can be expensive (anywhere
| between $1M-$5M/mile in the US), but can possibly be avoided
| with batteries and charging at stations (or energy provided via
| rails).
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/clean-energy-green-hy...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > Building new catenary systems can be expensive (anywhere
| between $1M-$5M/mile in the US)
|
| Can you just hire Japan Rail to build it for you, then?
| lmm wrote:
| The problem is political dysfunction at higher levels.
| California tried hiring SNCF to build their high speed
| rail, but that fell apart because what California wanted
| was impossible and didn't make sense. (SNCF built a line in
| Morocco instead)
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Is that dysfunction specific to catenary systems? Would
| H2 or battery-based systems be less politically
| dysfunctional?
| danhor wrote:
| Overhead wires take quite a while to plan and build and for
| non-frequent service (1tph) and/or short trains installation
| costs and maintenance are quite high compared to buying e.g.
| BEMUs. Many of these services are shuttle runs with
| electrification at one or both ends and route lengths of less
| than 100km, so e.g. a Mireo Plus B with ~120 seats only a
| 580kWh battery (or less than 6 Tesla Model X batteries ) is
| used (https://www.vde.com/resource/blob/1979350/a41e9c3559af76f
| ee9... page 24)
|
| HEMUs for these types of services I don't understand. It's
| laudable that transit providers want to get away from fossil
| fuels (and putting up overhead wire is a long and arduous
| process, fraught with delays), but getting hydrogen today
| almost certainly isn't "green". Maybe "Technologieoffenheit"
| virtue signalling.
|
| But looking at the plans of various german transit agencies for
| future service on non-electrified lines, it's pretty obvious
| that hydrogen has already lost for rail-based transit, with
| almost every tender that doesn't prescribe a technology going
| to BEMUs and studies showing that BEMUs and partial
| electrification or full electrification almost always makes
| more sense than HEMUs
| thriftwy wrote:
| Optimizing ecological impact of non-frequent services leads
| to diminishing gains. In this case, a diesel train you
| already have may be the best option.
| Bairfhionn wrote:
| Maintenance/construction costs? Is my guess. I've driven lots
| of routes (especially rural) with Diesel trains. It's not rare
| (in Germany).
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Probably cheaper to use batteries at this point.
|
| Like what's the cost per mile to install overhead wires?
| Comments in an online magazine says $1M/mile[1]. You can buy
| 5-10,000 kwh worth of batteries for a million bucks.
|
| [1] https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/189389.aspx
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| athenot wrote:
| Interestingly, the total amount of rail is about the same for
| EU and US, however in the EU, 55% of it is electrified, and
| only 1% in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| What percentage of freight in either continent travels on an
| electric train?
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| The railroad network had to be rebuilt after WW2 in Europe
| and Japan. War can be good for something I suppose.
| o_m wrote:
| They fall down pretty often. I commute 30 mins, and it is the
| main reason for cancellations.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| They.. just.. fall down? Like the front fell off?
|
| Sorry, but never heard of that here, neither for the local
| trams, nor the >50% electrified on rail.. it is more likely
| some unhappy guys cut the signaling wires. Where is that?
| bluGill wrote:
| Overhead wires have been around since the 1950s (actually the
| 1800s), they are old technology, everyone wants to support new
| technology. Nobody cares that the new is worse than the old
| (this is both in practice and in theory).
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| This is extremely stupid. We have had electric trains for 200
| years and hydrogen was not involved.
| evandijk70 wrote:
| The main benefit of hydrogen that it is cheaper to store energy
| for long periods. When electricity comes mostly from renewables,
| which is expected to lead to very low, zero or even negative
| electricity during periods with lots of sun and/or wind, hydrogen
| could be produced for the cost of capital of electrolyzers +
| storage, which might tip the scales in favor of hydrogen.
| danhor wrote:
| The issue with this line of thinking is that electrolyzers are
| _very_ expensive. I 've read papers that estimated that using
| free electricity would only be cheaper than running 100% on the
| time for normal electricity prices of 8-9 ct/kWh (in germany)
| if free electricity was available at least 25% of the time.
| With energy storage for the daily variations already shaving
| some of the peaks off, I expect this to be surprisingly little
| energy (not even covering applications where hydrogen usage is
| pretty certain based on the lack of great alternatives).
| m463 wrote:
| I thought hydrogen storage was somewhat troublesome because of
| the cost and lifetime of storage containers.
|
| Compare alternative fuel vehicles and you'll see that hydrogen
| vehicles are really quite impractical.
|
| Hydrogen vehicles require tanks at extremely high pressure, and
| they might become fragile from the hydrogen.
|
| Actually, natural gas vehicles (CNG) were more practical and
| still didn't go that far without subsidies. Note that although
| natural gas is found natively - in the ground - a significant
| amount of energy is required to pressurize it to ~3600 psi for
| transportation.
|
| Now I would agree with you if your statement said diesel
| instead of hydrogen.
| legulere wrote:
| It depends on wether volume matters or not. The comment you
| are replying to speaks about seasonal storage. You can use
| caverns for that, like with natural gas. You only need around
| 3 times the volume to store the same energy as with natural
| gas.
|
| For vehicles like trains it can still be advantageous
| compared to batteries if you have very long ranges you have
| to drive without the possibility to recharge. Batteries
| simply get too heavy, bulky and expensive then.
| konschubert wrote:
| Negative electricity prices only happen due to subsidies.
|
| It's very easy and fast to turn off a solar power plant.
| Without subsidies, nobody will pay to feed power into the grid.
|
| And that's okay, ~0 is a good enough as a price.
| danhor wrote:
| Right now this is the case, but if roof-top solar is used
| more widely, it can happen even without subsidies. For owners
| of roof-top solar it should never be beneficial to turn run
| from the grid if not necessary, so coal and nuclear power
| plants that take a while to spin down might still produce
| oversupply, leading to negative prices
| konschubert wrote:
| You're assuming that rooftop solar receives a fixed power
| price or is able to do net metering. Both of these are
| subsidies.
|
| Without subsidies, somebody feeding solar from their
| rooftop into the grid will need to sell the power on the
| stock exchange, usually through a power broker company that
| adds them to their portfolio. (In Germany this is called
| "Direktvermarktung")
|
| This power broker will remotely curtail (turn off) the
| solar infeed when the spot prices turn negative.
| danhor wrote:
| No, I'm assuming rooftop solar users just use their solar
| themselves, thus significantly reducing the demand the
| grid sees. Since there is (and will be) no way to
| penalize using rooftop power yourself, demand might still
| be below the generation left even with renewables feeding
| into the grid turned off. This, of course, assumes
| widespread rooftop solar usage and a lot of
| "conventional" slow power generation online (the latter
| will likely remain the case in France for the next few
| decades, since they're in no hurry to reduce their
| nuclear power plant stock).
|
| I'm also don't understand why a fixed feed-in price has
| to be a subsidy? Is a fixed electricity price or a fixed
| gas price a subsidy? It could be that home owners are
| more comfortable selling their electricity for a fixed
| price and power brokers have determined that accurately
| measuring feed-in over time and adding remote-curtailment
| functionality is not worth the cost for small
| installations. I doubt we will see feed-in prices without
| any subsidies in the near future, but it could certainly
| happen.
| konschubert wrote:
| Okay, if you assume non-renewable generation that cannot
| be curtailed, then you are right of course.
|
| And your second point is also valid, a small flat rate
| infeed may be easier to bill for the broker than per-
| minute pricing with curtailment. But this will only be
| the case if prices aren't negative for too long.
| narrator wrote:
| Hydrogen is a better solution for ocean shipping, long-range
| airplanes, and industrial processes that need very high heat.
| Even Elon Musk admits the last one will be necessary. Fuel cells
| are not a good idea because they require expensive catalyst
| metals. Hydrogen, in the form of ammonia running in combustion
| engines, is just about the only decarbonized solution that work
| for the big container ships. Large scale ammonia engines have
| been successfully tested and may go into production in the next
| few years for these applications[1]. For trains, it's not a good
| idea because you can more easily supply power with overhead wire
| and you don't even need to deal with batteries.
|
| [1]https://www.power-technology.com/news/man-ammonnia-engine-
| te...
| hannob wrote:
| > Hydrogen is a better solution for [...] industrial processes
| that need very high heat.
|
| Why would that be, except maybe in rare cornercases? You can
| electrify almost anything, and it'll be more efficient and less
| polluting.
| bluGill wrote:
| That depends on your ability to get access to electric. While
| you can imagine wires across the ocean (or at 35000 feet), it
| doesn't seem practical or cost effective to install them.
| However if you are in more populated areas odds are you
| already have electric close and so it is more cost effective
| to connect to the grid.
|
| For transit use, a rule of thumb is if you have a bus every
| 10 minutes or less then it would be more cost effective in
| the long run to have wires to the bus (better than diesel or
| battery buses). However even when you have a bus every 10
| minutes odds are you have enough other routes that don't have
| that frequency and so overall it isn't worth it even though
| in some places it would be.
| prennert wrote:
| Lots of lines are not electrified, because of the
| infrastructure cost of raising bridges for the overhead line.
| In some places it might be simpler to switch diesel electric
| train engines to hydrogen engines.
| c54 wrote:
| What are the trades between synthesizing ammonia for combustion
| versus synthesizing methane?
| kposehn wrote:
| > For trains, it's not a good idea because you can more easily
| supply power with overhead wire and you don't even need to deal
| with batteries.
|
| Rail networks with large stretches of non-electrified lines are
| extremely costly to upgrade, so battery-electric and hydrogen
| are the likely solutions unless there is massive investment in
| electrification. The US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and
| Australia are prime examples of this.
|
| Currently CPKC is working on a number of HFC locomotives that
| are showing very promising results.
| pydry wrote:
| Also seasonal storage. Batteries are good for storing excess
| energy on Tuesday to use Wednesday, not so good at storing
| energy produced in July to use in December.
| danhor wrote:
| While hydrogen EMUs were first used in germany in planned service
| (with battery EMUs coming into service later this year), it seems
| that BEMUs might be more mature right now. The only HEMU being
| used right now is the iLint, and it has been in development for
| many years while the first "real" deployment is _plagued_ with
| issues (to be fair, not all of them stemming from the iLint
| itself). Meanwhile it seems that BEMUs are being offered by
| nearly every company, with trains from three different
| manufacturers starting service in the next 12 months.
|
| Hydrogen will probably see some use in railways, but more for
| freight and long-distance applications, mostly outside of
| Germany. I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of freight and
| long distance service in the US ran with hydrogen, with commuter
| trains mostly using batteries and conventional overhead
| electrification.
| TylerE wrote:
| I just don't see it. It's just such a pain in the ass to store
| and handle. Locomotives are actually a better case for
| batteries than most, because you could keep the batteries in a
| secondary car, much like a steam locomotive tender, that can
| easily be swapped out on a siding when needed in about 10
| minutes... or just chain as many together as you need for the
| trip.
|
| Trains, especially freight trains, aren't that weight
| sensitive, since they tend to mostly roll along at the same
| speed.
|
| Such trains could be fitted with a pantograph and operate
| directly off OHLE when possible. Actually, don't recall the
| class but I'm fairly sure the UK has a variant of one it's
| commuter EMU with a small built in batter. The route it travels
| has a few miles without wires where is impractical to add wires
| so it uses batterys to cover that gap.
| kenhwang wrote:
| Not being weight sensitive is the very important key point.
| It means trains of the future could use some non-lithium
| battery chemistry.
|
| Likely sodium-ion, which is projected to be significantly
| cheaper due to abundant materials, safer due to its
| chemistry, more tolerant to hot/cold weather, and it's main
| drawback of lower energy density isn't a big deal to trains.
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