Freight trains criss-crossing the nation carry vehicles of coal and tanks of oil and pure gasoline to energy vegetation to assist preserve the nation’s electrical grid going. Might freight trains haul electrons generated by renewable power sources for a similar goal?
That was a query that Christopher Smith, who has an intensive background within the renewable power trade, requested himself. He was mountaineering in Alaska, watching a prepare roll by when he had what he known as an epiphany: freight trains the truth is might play a significant position in getting renewable energy from the distant locations the place it’s typically produced to the place the electrical energy is required.
About 4 years later, Smith and Jeff Anderson, a green-tech entrepreneur, are pursuing what they are saying will likely be a first-in-the-nation pilot mission in Colorado. They wish to present that trains can be utilized to get round transmission bottlenecks by hauling giant batteries to websites, resembling present coal or pure gasoline vegetation, the place the saved energy will be distributed to the electrical grid.
Their firm, San Francisco-based SunTrain, is becoming a member of Xcel Vitality, Colorado’s largest electrical utility, and the Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory in Golden, to use for a $10 million federal grant to additional the know-how. If the know-how is profitable and state regulators give their approval, the pilot mission could possibly be developed in two years and the primary prepare could possibly be working within the subject in 4 years, mentioned Anderson, SunTrain CEO.
Anderson and Smith, SunTrain’s president and chief know-how officer, mentioned a scarcity of transmission capability on the grid is hampering the deployment of energy from renewable sources and efforts to transition from fossil fuels. A number of research forecast a must considerably develop the nation’s transmission system, together with a latest report by the U.S. Division of Vitality in partnership with NREL and the Pacific Northwest Nationwide Laboratory that mentioned the system might want to a minimum of double in measurement by 2050.
“Proper now, a majority of inexperienced power initiatives are constructed round transmission entry. All of the low-hanging fruit round transmission line entry has been devoured up over the past 20 years,” Smith mentioned.
Some initiatives that Smith labored on with the Worldwide Brotherhood of Electrical Employees over the previous few years fell by the wayside due to lack of entry to the grid. “That led me to begin considering if there was one other technique to begin bringing electrons to market. Is there one other supply technique to convey electrons to load facilities and shoppers?”
The U.S. freight prepare system covers roughly 140,000 miles and far of that’s in sweeping, distant swaths of land the place wind farms and enormous photo voltaic arrays are usually positioned, Smith mentioned.
One other benefit is that trains and railways are constructed to deal with heavy hundreds that will be an excessive amount of for vans. The lithium-iron-phosphate batteries SunTrain is utilizing weigh 120 tons every. The corporate mentioned the prepare carrying the high-capacity batteries would seemingly run from 80 to 100 vehicles.
Smith mentioned the batteries include lower than 6% lithium, in contrast with 60% in batteries with completely different chemistry makeups. If a prepare derails, “we’re going to have a number of twisted steel: not an explosion, not a hearth, not an environmental hazard,” he added.
In accordance with SunTrain, railway firms are open to the thought of turning into conveyors of energy from renewable power sources. Smith mentioned hauling fossil fuels has lengthy been a giant supply of their income, however is making up an more and more smaller portion of their hundreds.
Members of the IBEW and the Nationwide Electrical Contractor’s Affiliation had been available for a information convention by SunTrain on Dec. 4 in Denver to indicate help for the corporate’s pilot mission, known as the Wi-fi Different by Prepare Transport, or WATT. So was Gov. Jared Polis, who wrote a letter to federal businesses in help of SunTrain’s grant software.
“This supplies an instantaneous, various connection between renewable power technology and cargo, bypassing the congested transmission system,” Polis mentioned within the Oct. 20 letter. “Importantly, it additionally helps an financial transition for employees and communities by changing misplaced coal transport enterprise with battery freight vehicles and repurposing retiring fossil gas energy vegetation as cost/discharge factors.”
Anderson of SunTrain mentioned Xcel Vitality’s Cherokee Producing Station in Denver is a potential website the place the corporate might cut back using pure gasoline for electrical energy. The corporate estimates the pilot mission will price about $125 million. Smith mentioned SunTrain is elevating cash for the work, together with from enterprise funds.
“If the grant doesn’t come via, then we get extra inventive and lift more cash,” Anderson mentioned.
