Energy News Beat
The latest example of pointless virtue-signaling, intended to help ‘save the planet’, has shown itself to be inadequate for its intended role.
The 53 Class 777 units, built by Stadler Rail in Switzerland & Poland (because all the British locomotive manufacturers have long since gone out of business from lack of orders), costing £500 million each, are intended to be used in Liverpool and surrounding parts of Cheshire and Lancashire.
They can operate from the ‘third-rail’ system at 750vdc, which is an extra electrified line running alongside the track, or can be powered through pantographs on the roof at 25kv, though there is no overhead catenary installed, nor any current plans for such a system to be built.
Their third source of power is from onboard batteries, which it is intended will be used outside the current Merseyrail system.
To accommodate the new Class 777 fleet, extensive, and expensive, infrastructure changes were necessitated. These adaptations were performed under a rolling program between October 2018 and May 2019; changes included adjustments to 97 platforms at 56 stations across the Merseyrail network, along with track realignments and other unnamed ‘refinements’.
In October, a new station, costing no less than £80million, was opened at Headbolt Lane to serve the battery-powered trains.
Another cause for the alterations was the increased length of the new units, which was addressed via a mixture of platform lengthening and signal repositioning where required. The program was structured to minimize disruption to Merseyrail’s scheduled services wherever possible.
New power supply transformers had to be installed, along with eight new substations and miscellaneous cable upgrades, to provide greater quantities of electricity.
The first units were delivered for testing in January 2020, and have had to undergo numerous modifications due to problems encountered. Passenger services with the class commenced on 23rd January 2023, initially using unit 777049.
By July 2023, only a handful of units were in service, because of ongoing ‘technical issues’.
The Class 777 units weigh 99 tons each, compared to 36 tons for the 750vdc Class 507 & 508s they are intended to replace. This will of course increase track wear, which will require more frequent maintenance, with increased costs.
Running on 750vdc, they produce 2000hp, and the batteries are configured to produce the same output, for all of 34 miles before they require a full recharge.
Fast-forward to yesterday and the BBC ran an article saying continuing problems with these units have caused cancellation of services, and refunds are having to be made to passengers.
Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotherham said:
“We anticipated that we would encounter some teething issues and disruption during the delivery of our new station and trains, but I’ll be the first to say that services on the Kirkby line have fallen short of the standards that our passengers deserve.
While I cannot undo the disruption that passengers have already faced, I hope this gesture demonstrates our appreciation for their patience and understanding.”
He said it was a “gesture of goodwill” for the “teething issues”.
They are still having ‘teething issues’ after three years? Sounds to me more like fundamental design or performance issues.
See the BBC article here bbc.co.uk
But it doesn’t end there. There are two other examples of this kind of nonsense being pursued.
The Severn Valley Heritage Railway has teamed up with the University of Birmingham and local start-up company, Vanguard Sustainable Transport Solutions, to convert a Class 08 diesel shunter to work on hydrogen.
They have removed the existing diesel engine and generators, as they prepare Class 08 shunter No 08635 to receive its new power system.
Image: Severn Valley Railway
Mike Ball, the Severn Valley Railway’s vice chairman, has been closely involved with the project from its inception:
“We were delighted when the University of Birmingham asked us to get involved in this project. As a heritage railway, we’re actively looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint, and having a hydrogen-powered shunter will play a key part in that plan.
The current preparation stage for the Harrier shunter is providing an excellent opportunity for some of our younger volunteers to put their skills to good use.
The group working on the 08 are all still in their teens, and their ability to plan and implement this task has been nothing short of amazing.
They’re the volunteers of the future, working on a locomotive for the future.”
The best way to ‘reduce your carbon footprint’ Mr Ball, is to stop running services and close down the Severn Valley Railway. Not that I would wish that for a moment, but I have been heavily involved with heritage railways since 1994, and the last thing I want to see is these lines closing down because of non-existent environmental concerns.
Vanguard Sustainable Transport Solutions is designing the hydrogen-battery hybrid traction system. This will be made up of hydrogen cylinders, a hydrogen fuel cell stack, and a hybrid battery.
The cylinders will store hydrogen as a pressurized gas, which will be fed to the fuel cell stack via a regulator. In the fuel cell stack, hydrogen will be combined with oxygen from the air, to produce electricity to power the locomotive.
Sounds like an explosion waiting to happen.
Meanwhile, the battery will store energy to provide additional power for when it’s needed.
The equipment will be mounted on a sub-frame, fitted to the existing engine mountings. It will supply the existing traction motors of the Class 08, which will keep its existing controls.
The Birmingham University article can be seen here at birmingham.ac.uk
Then there is another group, who have gutted a 100-ton former Class 37 freight locomotive, to turn it into a near-silent battery-powered loco.
Owned by the Heavy Tractor Group (tractor is one of the nicknames for the class), 37207 has been converted to run on batteries following three years of research and development by a company called Meteor Power.
Image: PressReader
Throughout last summer, 37207, a former regular on Cornish China Clay services, was used to test an electric powertrain that Meteor Power had installed in a Class 08 diesel shunter and is now ready to receive its electric conversion.
As part of its test program, last June it successfully traveled 1½ miles within Wolverton Works on battery power.
A whole one-and-a-half miles! Wow!!
According to Meteor Power, this development of a battery conversion system for the locomotive provides a “greener, cheaper, and quieter solution for freight or ‘super shunter’ work”.
No details were provided on how much horsepower this loco would develop, nor anything about its range.
The Rail Advent website said in April last year it was hoped that 37207 would be certified to run on the mainline by the end of the year, but I’ve seen no updates since then.
See the Rail Advent article here railadvent.co.uk
These seem just the latest in a series of completely pointless wastes of money, which will do nothing except provide the public and industry with vastly inferior services.
Source: Principia-scientific.com
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There are four main ways in which the roughly 131 million American homes are heated: electricity, natural gas, propane or fuel oil. The vast majority use electricity or natural gas. While some 20 million homes already have a heat pump, a similar number still rely on inefficient electric resistance heaters which are expensive to use, and predominantly found in low and middle-income households.
Around half of US homes are heated with gas – mostly natural gas, although some 10 million homes use propane or heating oil which is stored in tanks on the property, and powers often aging furnaces. These furnaces heat up air which is then blown round the homes though ducts and vents. The use of hot water pipes and radiators, as normally seen in the UK, is comparatively unusual.
The other big difference from the UK is that around 90 percent of homes use some form of air conditioning. Two-thirds of households use central air conditioning or a central heat pump as their main AC equipment. That means that quite a lot of US homes either don’t have air conditioning, use portable AC or have a system that is powered by gas.
Against this backdrop the US Government plans to install 20 million heat pumps by 2030, with 40 percent of the benefits being directed to disadvantaged communities. Lawmakers hope that as existing heating and air conditioning systems break down with age they will be replaced by modern heat pumps.
Heat pumps run on electricity, and are hailed as key to achieving zero carbon goals by removing the use of fossil fuels for heating. Of course, that assumes that the electricity that powers the heat pumps is generated from something other than fossil fuels – unfortunately, around 60 percent of electricity in the US comes from fossil fuels.
There are other challenges with heat pumps, in particular their performance in cold weather, when their operations become less efficient. This is a fundamental feature of air-source heat pumps since they involve indoor and outdoor components – when it’s cold outside the outdoor component must be heated in order to work properly, and this means less energy is available for heating indoors. The lower temperatures fall, the worse this effect becomes, and the more expensive the system becomes to run.
Heat pump fans often point to the widespread use of the devices in cold nations such as Norway and Sweden as evidence they “work” in cold weather, but they fail to mention that many Scandinavian households have more than one heat pump or use an additional form of heating, typically a wood-burning stove. Gathering wood for heating is common across the Nordic countries. More modern models claim to “work well” at low temperatures, but they will still lose efficiency as it gets colder.
The economics of heat pumps vary greatly across the US, depending on the amount of heat needed and the price of natural gas. The installation of heat pumps is expensive, with air source heat pumps costing between $2,500 and $10,000, with the average homeowner spending $5,500. However these costs can jump to up to $30,000 in homes which don’t have existing ductwork. Ground source (or geothermal) heat pumps work much better in cold weather but they are much more expensive. They also require a lot of land so aren’t suitable for many homes.
There are tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act that cover 30 percent of the upfront costs of buying and installing a heat pump, up to $2,000. For households with less than 80 percent of the median area income, the subsidy is higher and will cover 100 percent of the upfront costs, up to $8,000. Many states also offer rebates.
According to the International Energy Agency, heat pumps can reduce American heating bills by up to $300 per year. That’s a significant saving for those households whose installation costs are fully covered by the government, but not so great for those left funding thousands of dollars of upfront costs. People using natural gas for heating see smaller benefits since gas is pretty cheap in the US.
So are heat pumps hot or not? The boring answer to that is “it depends”. Low income households with older electrical resistance or propane heaters are likely to benefit the most from getting a heat pump as they will have most if not all of the upfront costs covered and will make significant savings on energy bills. These households are also less likely to have air conditioning, so the installation of a heat pump will give them a new capability for cooling.
Toby Schumacher and the external part of his heat pump CREDIT: Jeff Gilbert
However in colder states heat pumps could need a secondary heating source which might be difficult to afford. For higher income households the economic benefits are less clear. They will have to pay higher upfront costs which will take years to recover through lower bills. If they currently have gas heating the savings will be smaller and the capital costs take longer to repay.
The climate benefits in the short term will be marginal since the US still relies heavily on fossil fuels for electricity generation. Switching from burning gas in the home to burning gas in power stations does reduce emissions since power stations are more efficient. However electricity demand will increase, as people switch from gas to electric heating, and will rise further if the homes which don’t currently have electric air conditioning begin to use their heat pumps for cooling.
Bringing cooling to houses that don’t currently have air conditioning will be an absolute increase in energy demand, rather than a change from one form of energy to another, and it could be big. Air conditioners are the domestic appliances that generally consume the most electricity, accounting for an average of 17 percent of total US household electricity usage (compared with 15 percent for space heaters).
This higher electricity demand will strain America’s creaking power grids, which already struggle with reliability issues, and they will increase the need for more generation and grid infrastructure such as power lines and transformers, adding to the multi-billion dollar bill for electricity system upgrades. To make heat pumps really work we need reliable low carbon electricity and plenty of it otherwise there is a risk the increased demand will cause more blackouts. And if you have electric heating, a blackout means no heating either.
There are a lot of numbers in this article. And they add up to one conclusion: it’s hard to be more than lukewarm on heat pumps. They will be great for people who get them for free to replace old, expensive and inefficient heating systems – these people will also be getting free air conditioners. They will be a lot less great for everyone else, involving high upfront costs, and more grid infrastructure that will be paid for through higher bills and taxes. And as long as the majority of electricity comes from fossil fuels, their climate benefits will be marginal.