Two out of 10 diesel yard engines at their Pittsburgh area plants will be replaced by battery electric units built by Innovative Rail Technologies.
The result will be a massive reduction in particulate pollution and fuel consumption, though even replacing all 10 would have a minor impact on particulate and CO2 emissions compared to the steelmaking operation.
But there’s no reason it can’t be feasible to eventually replace all 10 and move to lower emissions steel making options.
Once trains figure out how to do it regen will cut fuel and maintenance costs drastically.
Electric trains have been doing regen for well over a century.
What am I missing? Electric trains have used regen since basically forever.
Agreed, but many places do not store the energy. Going over the Rockies for example.
I can’t imagine how heavy that battery will be. I wonder if they will do it old school coal car style for the battery or fully integrated.
Either way if this works out, the hydrogen clan will be very upset.
Better yet they should do a combination of overhead electrical contact and batteries for those ultra wilderness areas.
If only there were some way to connect trains to the electrical grid with something like overhead wires so they didn’t have to carry fuel or batteries in board … /S