Battery Powered Tram Charges in 60 Seconds

SK writes to tell us that a new streetcar, powered by lithium battery, has been invented by the Railway Technical Research Institute in Kokubunji, Tokyo. The new transport is capable of speeds of 40 kph for 15 kilometers and can convert 70 percent of its deceleration energy into electricity which is then sent back to the battery which can recharge in under one minute.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

[WiglyWorm]

Well, yes and no. Power delivery is not a problem at all. Look at the cable cars in San Fransisco, any modern subway... really most modern rail systems. However, if they can turn 70% of their breaking power in to electrical energy, accelerating the train back up to speed or, apparently, 15Km of crusing can be done absolutely for free. Lowering the carbon footprint to make it more environmentally friendly and cutting costs for the opperator all at once.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, and adding batteries and control electronics and employing people to write control software and building the damn things doesn't add any carbon at all!
See, that's the problem with current thinking re the carbon problem. We're just throwing more technology at the problem, technology which is subsidized entirely by the present fossil fuel economy. The only real long term solution to the carbon footprint problem is to radically re-think how we live our lives. Do we need to travel to and from work everyday when all we do is manipulate information?

How much charge?

[mangu]

"Recharge in under one minute". Sure, but how much charge? Take how many kilowatt-hours of charge you want, multiply it by 60 and you'll get how many kilowatts of power you need to charge it in a minute. Now divide by the voltage to get the current. How big would the cable and the contacts need to be?

It seems we now have the ideal battery (also called a "capacitor"), now let's concentrate on creating the superconducting cables and contacts.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

[frup]

Often the short term cost of a long term solution is great. From that the long term problem eventually gets solved/improved though. Even if this seems a waste in some ways it places building blocks for the next step. With out these kinds of projects it would be difficult for us to think differently or even transition to a new lifestyle. In New Zealand, if everyone employed solar water heating we would save 50% of household power usage from the old water cylinder. That's the amount a $1 billion power plant could give us extra. So each person spends an extra $10,000 on their home instead of a cheap water cylinder and the long term savings for the country are huge.

I agree that throwing ever more Hi-tech at the problem probably won't fix anything but thinking about how we use our current low tech in different ways will. I am studying architecture and have taken many papers and read many books on sustainable building (Not just in the sense of green building either) and can tell you from my point of view it is where humanity can save the most resources. Building smaller more contained rooms saves on heating, so does building thick concrete floors. The way we use windows etc etc.

I also think that taking an open source approach to more of our research and getting rid of patents will save a lot of money and carbon dioxide emissions. Too much effort is being put in to redundancy.

hopefully this time they will stay around

[DMoylan]

The original Drumm train was constructed in the Great Southern Railways workshops at Inchicore. The weight of the train with passengers was about 85 tons. There was seating accommodation for 140 passengers. The train could accelerate from standstill at about 1 m.p.h. per second and attain speeds of 40 to 50 m.p.h. with ease. The train was fitted with a successful system of regenerative braking, whereby an important fraction of the energy surge made available on a down-gradient or on de-accelerating at a station was returned to the battery. The Drumm Battery train operated successfully on the Dublin to Bray section of the line with occasional runs to Greystones some five miles farther on, from 1932 to 1948. As passsenger numbers increased two pairs of power units were joined under the control of one driver and later a specially wired coach was put between the two trains bringing its capacity up to 400 passengers. By 1939, four Drumm trains had been built but it became impossible to secure orders and raw material once the World War 11, 1939-1945, broke out. The Drumm Battery Company folded in 1940. The outbreak of the war made the Drumm trains invaluable as coal for steam engines was in short supply and inferior. With the war over, it was decided in 1949 to scrap the Drumm trains at a time when the promise of diesel locomotives pointed to the end of the steam era. The Drumm trains, minus their batteries were sometimes used as ordinary coaches.

http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/history/drumm.html [huji.ac.il]

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

[frup]

The benefit being a reduction in your personal power bill, lower carbon emissions etc. We did it and save around $100 per month now. Over 10 years your installation is free.

Awesome Lithium Tech

[Bryan Ischo]

If its battery is anything like lithium ion batteries used in laptops, then after a year it'll only go 5 km on a charge instead of 15. Also it will do weird things like indicate that it has enough charge to go another 5 km but just suddenly use up its last 20% in under a minute.

I am not a big fan of lithium ion tech. It seems very gimmicky to me; allowing manufacturers to claim that their laptop batteries last N hours when in fact that will only be true for less than 6 months, as the charge capacity of lithium ion batteries always rapidly deteriorate.

My Panasonic Y2 battery started at 6+ hours per charge, and is now, after not even three years, down to about 2.5 hours per charge.

So if the streetcar in question uses similar tech, then I would expect its range to diminish rapidly with recharges. Since it will be recharged much more frequently than any laptop would, can we even expect its battery to last a whole year before becoming basically worthless?

Interesting application

[PPH]

Besides regenerative braking, the battery technology could be used in areas where it is expensive, or unsightly to install an overhead conductor. The trolley can charge off the distribution system and then continue along routes where no overhead is required.

Visit Seattle and ride the SLUT [nwsource.com]!

Re:Trams are the wrong solution

[b0s0z0ku]

Now, the most efficient way to run a vehicle is at a constant speed, acceleration is expensive in terms of energy, and the more mass you have, the more energy you expend. Trams almost never reach a constant speed and because they're basically rail, they're extremely heavy as well.

Rail doesn't necessarily mean heavy. And trams are usually powered by low-voltage DC (relatively low: 600V as opposed to up to 25kV for a lot of trains) overhead lines, which makes pumping energy from regenerative braking back into the system relatively easy. And keep in mind also that rolling friction on steel rails is a lot less than friction from a rubber tire on a roadway.

-b.

Re:Awesome

[Stefanwulf]

Public transportation is a joke (at least in the US).

In most of the US I'd agree, although not for the reasons the parent stated...public transit works amazingly well with older once-industrial cities, with a high-density downtown and either small clustered neighborhoods or high-density suburbs surrounding. It doesn't work well in a city which is essentially all "suburban." Not surprisingly, public transit does quite where you have the largest concentration of "old" cities. It works in places like san francisco and the pacific northwest, and it is arguably at its best in the northeast megalopolis. In fact you can take local and commuter rails and buses all the way from Virginia to Maine without ever having to resort to long distance solutions like Amtrak or Greyhound, and I've commuted to work on public transit since college, because it's usually faster and cheaper than driving.

Most cities in the US don't fit that model, however. Public transit just won't work without population density and clustered areas of employment, and in the post-WWII development boom we put almost no limits on how much people could spread out. A lot of new development and zoning (at least on the east coast where I live) is beginning to take public transit into account, forcing suburbs back into more of a small-town model, with sidewalks and a centralized school, shopping district, and transit station that everyone can easily walk to. Maryland has more info up at http://www.mdp.state.md.us/smartintro.htm/ [state.md.us].

New planning like this is really most effective near an old city with effective public transit, however. Cities which primarily developed in the 50's or later were planned around individual car ownership. When each individual is driving the most effective layout is to encourage a high number of lower-volume commuting routes, and it is very difficult to make mass transit work in a setup like that.

Re:Awesome

[ArcherB]

Wow, what a strawman.

The public transportation system I described is quite real. It was from my experiences riding in Chicago. I did not, however, mention the weather. It was 15 below 0 Fahrenheit that morning. I think it "warmed" up to about 5 by the time I got home. With wind gusts up to 30 mph, I'm not even going to guess at the wind chill. I had to stand outside for at least 15 minutes each way waiting for the train. So, no. It was not a strawman.

This isn't about your freedom.

First, the GP said my attitude needed to be changed. Why does that sound like the kind of job a re-education camp would perform? This guy is saying I don't even have the freedom to think what I want. My God! If I'm not free to think, what am I free to do?

This has everything to do with my freedom. When the government controls how I get places, then the government controls everything. Where I live, what I can carry, when I can travel, where I can go and how much it will cost me are all controlled by government rules. Sorry, but giving the government that much control over my life is not what I would call freedom.

Public transportation works in Europe. Granted, there are geographical differences as well as cultural differences. If you spent enough time in the right European cities, you would probably see systems where public transportation is working.

Maybe, but that doesn't negate the fact that it is all government controlled. I hear that their system is the best in the world, but that doesn't mean I want it forced on me here in the US. What advantage does a public transport system have over privately owned non-polluting automobiles?

Here is one case study... I spent a year in Poznan, Poland (pop 567,882). In that city, there are 20 trams (streetcar) lines and 57 bus lines. The trams run center-city and through the more dense areas, with buses making up the difference.

Poland? Did they used to be communist? Aren't these people used to having the government control their lives? That takes me back to my original point. Take new Orleans for example. Katrina was on the way and the people with cars left. No government assistance required. Those that didn't have cars went to the Superdome and were stuck. We all know how that turned out. If the government gets stuck, you're out of luck! (a counter example would be the evacuation of Houston about a month after Katrina in the way of another hurricane. There was a traffic jam from Houston to Austin, about 200 miles of bumper to bumper cars. There is better planning now for such a situation.)

I'll push all that aside for now. I live in a city with about 5,000 people. It's about 20 miles from where I work, a city of about 656,000. How do I get from one transportation system to the other? How long will that take? I work from 10:00am until 7:00pm. Sometimes I have to work late. Does public transportation run until 9:00pm? Does it run until midnight? Do I want to be on public transportation after midnight?

While some own vehicles, the public transportation system has high ridership, to the point that during rush-hour one must be careful not to be crushed...

A problem I don't experience in my car. Although, I may be crushed by another car, but that is a different story.

People are not living by loud trains, but they are more comfortable with walking and riding bikes, and there are sidewalks (something quite rare in the USA). It may be 1-2 kilometers to the nearest tram stop, and that is perfectly fine by the city inhabitants.

How was that walk in the rain? Any better in the snow? How about freezing rain? Granted, I don't like driving in bad weather either, but at least I'm not standing in it.

That said, I lived right next to the tram on the 6th floor of a high-rise, and hardly noticed the tram. It wasn't much, if at all, worse than the traffic of an average suburban street in the USA.

If you live in a high-rise, then