Hitachi Rail is in the process of conducting the first trial in the UK of replacing a diesel engine on an intercity train with a battery.
The new battery technology is being trialled on a TransPennine train in a pioneering collaboration with Angel Trains, TransPennine Express, and Turntide Technologies.
Testing the battery-powered train started earlier today, Wednesday, 29 May. The battery, which generates a peak power of over 700 kw, was retrofitted into a TransPennine Express ‘Nova 1′ Class 802 train. It is estimated that one battery will reduce emissions and fuel costs by 30% while delivering the same levels of high-speed acceleration and performance and being no heavier than the diesel engine it replaces.
A full-scale trial will take place on Transpennine routes this summer to test how intercity trains can enter, alight and leave non-electrified stations in zero-emission battery mode to improve air quality and reduce noise pollution.
The aim of the trial is to provide real-world evidence to inform a business case for a 100% -battery-electric intercity train that can run up to 100 km in battery mode, which will be sufficient to cover the final non-electrified sections of intercity routes in the coming years.
It will also show how battery technology can reduce infrastructure costs by minimising the need for overhead wires in tunnel sections and across complex junctions.
In March, Great Western Railway started trials of a fast-charge battery train on the Greenford branch in West London.
We’re really pleased to be a part of this innovative and critically important trial of battery technology.
We take our environmental responsibilities seriously and are constantly looking at ways of making rail travel even more sustainable and efficient.
This trial will allow us to assess the exciting new technology on our Nova 1 train; we’re looking forward to seeing the results and how well the batteries work on our network.
Paul Staples, Engineering, Safety and Sustainability Director at TransPennine Express
Responses
ScotRail were going to convert some of the Class 385 Cimmuter with batteries fitted to be used on shorter journeys that some lines in the Glasgow area aren’t electrified.
We have nuclear submarines in the 1950s AMERICA experimented with Nuclear powered Aircraft. Trains would be ideal to be nuclear powered .Mainline passenger and freight.
Thank goodness the planet appears to have limitless quantities of minerals to make all the batteries we’re going to need. Or does it?
@mashworth67 Nope, we don’t. Someone has to pay for decarbonisation and it is us, through taxes and green levies and higher bills/tickets. What is more important than ever is to fix our broken economy and generate wealth by lowering energy costs. More coal, more oil, more gas. The net zero obsessed mob won’t like it but we can’t kickstart our economy with green energy.
We’ve ALL been living too cheaply in a world that’s been poisoned with petrochemicals – micro plastics in human cells, not just gross but highly damaging.
Governments give BILLIONS of OUR MONEY to big oil but the press hardly report it. So we’re paying to subsidise an industry that’s killing us and the planet, making billionaires richer.
The green revolution is a BIG opportunity for business, that’s what will put us on the front for rather than the back foot.
There is NOTHING green about BATTERIES JImster. Do just a TINY bit of research on how MINING LITHIUM is harmful on a truly MONSTROUS scale.
Lithium mining is not great, that’s true. But the environmental damage caused by oil and coal extraction makes lithium mining look like knitting.
Never mind that were just going to burn the stuff (at least the lithium gets used multiple times before it gets recycled to be used again), just the spillages alone are far more destructive than using batteries.
What an absolute crock.
New non-fossil technology is vital to our economy, even ignoring the atmospheric benefits of not spewing particulates and nitrogen dioxide all over the place. Ignore the co2 thing, using batteries in an electric train just makes way more sense than shoehorning a filthy diseasel in there.
The advent of sodium batteries will completely obliterate any arguments about mineral shortages.
ScotRail Class 385 could also have batteries fitted to operate on shorter journeys and on non-electrified lines that can’t be electrified with 25kv OHL. Especially the Fife Circle Lines.
It’s nice to see that someone is providing a real world solution to decarbonising the rail industry. What we need to do now is to decarbonise the power grid as currently all UK electricity supplied via national grid is only 25% CO2 free, as the rest produces CO2 at the point of power production or at source (this is from the UK government’s own figures).
25%? When are you getting those figures from? It’s more like 50% renewables and 10% nuclear.