Wild. Colorado is short on transmission lines to get the massive amount of #solar and #windpower generated in the southern part of the state up to the Denver metro area, so… they will soon be running freight trains full of giant batteries up and down the Front Range. These trains used to ship hundreds of tons of coal, but are shipping less now as the coal fired power plants are being decommissioned: too dirty and too expensive. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/suntrain-experimental-train-car-solar-energy-union-pacific-rail-lines-colorado/
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@impermanen_ Has anyone seen anything more recent on this, such as the construction of the battery discharge site?
@impermanen_ “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747,” etc.
@adamgreenfield a few people have mentioned “never underestimate the bandwidth of X” and I had to look up the reference. Great story! https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/20jlv3/never_underestimate_the_bandwidth_of_a_station/
@impermanen_ Google used to use trucks full of hard drives to move massive amounts of data (iirc, mostly for astronomical observatories). At a certain size, that was faster than using the (non-interstate-highway) network. Do they still do that?
I always thought that was pretty funny, but this is approaching Rube Goldberg levels. As trains become more efficient and battery enegy densities increase maybe it will make long-term sense. Stranger things have happened.
@impermanen_ Your post makes it sound like they're doing this already, but this is an experimental product aiming to be running by 2031. Maybe if it's gonna take that long, they should just build the transmission lines? And electrify the freight line with overhead wires while they're at it...
@scott unfortunately it’s not that simple. Xcel Energy has been trying to build transmission lines for a decade and have not been able to secure a right of way. Property owners and local governments keep blocking one plan after another. They may have succeeded recently in shutting down public hearings and getting the state to use eminent domain but I don’t think the obstacles are all cleared. So the Suntrain pilot is actually a workaround to speed things up and avoid land battles.
@impermanen_ @scott
Solutionary Rail: run power lines above railroad tracks. Use it to electrify rail *and* connect new generation with loads
@impermanen_ @scott This is a really interesting proposal. My initial reaction was that there was no way this could ever scale, and that it would be a rinky-dink patchwork solution. But some back-of-the-envelope math(*) shows it's viable.
A modern 345kV line carries 600MW, which is 14 GW-hours of electricity over a day.
A perfectly-efficient train-car sized battery is estimated to store 2.5MW-hour (using iron sulfite energy densities). Assume it can make 4 trips/day from Colorado, that's 9 MW-hours per day.
So you need about 1,500 train cars to match the energy capacity of the high-tension line. Assuming a cost of $1M per car, that's $1.5B in capital outlay. Not a crazy amount in this day and age.
Compare to $400M for constructing the high-tension line, and that $1.5B starts to look reasonable, especially since it works around an otherwise impossible political problem.
@scott also, edited my op to avoid the misleading impression. Thanks for the correction.
@impermanen_ Shuffling batteries around on trains. Wow, and there are people who consider the US backward and stunted.
(Yes, better they should be shuffling batteries by rail than shuffling coal by rail or any other method, but.)
@impermanen_ never underestimate the bandwidth ... ahem energy density of a freight train full of batteries hurtling down the train tracks
@impermanen_ That is the laugh I needed tonight.
*sure, the trains probably run on diesel, but I can always imagine them as pulled by coal-fired steam locomotives…
@impermanen_ In a world where data rates by carrier pigeon are competitive…
@impermanen_ this is not good for more than a temporary patch
@indyradio we’re like a patient in the emergency room and the doctors are trying to find a way, any way, to keep us alive.
@impermanen_ so Trump wants to bring coal back.
that's really mind bending, when you think the rest of this through. then add that factor.
#Trump #USA #Coal #fossilfuels
@indyradio we tore our local coal-fired plant down. Pretty sure the site will be one of the battery terminals for the SunTrain. I don’t think coal is really coming back. It still sucks to try to make it happen, though.
@impermanen_ We've come along way since the robot vacuums of the 80s, from Samsung.
They were fully functional except for the required surveillance.
Batteries required: surveillance included.
This is like the LG TV that broadcast your playlist to a ftp site unknown to you, until a hacker exposed it.
This is the exact reason BT locks down their set boxes.
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