JCB are doing both, they have some battery ones on the smaller end. Hydrogen is for the larger machines on sites without clear charging infrastructure and often not the time to recharge. Fuel cells don't handle the dust well apparently.
jalopnik.com
The quoted bit finishes with "Result: battery trains are cheaper to operate."
Reassures me that the people who say that UK engineers /railway people are uniquely incompetent are wrong!
Of the 3 UK prototypes based on old MK3 EMUs:
I thought the issue was that, where there is a very long stretch without any electrified sections to recharge batteries, a BEMU doesn't have sufficient range. TfW's tri-mode FLIRTs have a diesel engine because they are not completely confident of being able to manage the Vale Of Glamorgan line (where no electrification is currently funded/authorised/planned) on batteries alone.
I imagine it's the recharging time (and/or difficultly finding sufficent power for a charger) in places like the Heart Of Wales or Scottish highlands that means BEMUs don't quite cut it.
Which is almost exactly the conclusion Network Rail's Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy (TDNS) interim programme business case comes to. TDNS Executive Summary link here - there's a map in there showing the recommended decarbonisation solution for each route. The only routes earmarked for hydrogen are:
Nope; the TDNS recomendation is electrification, with Basingstoke-Salisbury being 'Core Electrification' and Salisbury-Exeter 'Ancillary Electrification' which I think means the business case is marginal but still comes out better than battery or hydrogen trains.
Nope; in the TDNS Barton on Humber is just a very short stub of unelectrified line so is the TDNS recommends BEMUs.
Apparently, the Hydrogen Aventras are/were planned to be built without pantographs so, as reddragon said above, cannot benefit from existing OLE / 3rd rail. That is absolutely nuts in my view; the range of a hydrogen unit before having to refuel, while expected to be longer than batteries, is still less than a DMU. Thus, hydrogen bi-modes seem to be a possible way forward - by interworking diagrams with under-wires routes you could limit the total mileage on unwired routes (thus avoiding the need to take units out of service for refueling in the middle of the day). For example once Aberdeen-Inverness-Tain is all wired up (which is in Scotland's plan, but not until after 2035) they could interwork Kyle Of Lochalsh and Wick/Thurso services with Aberdeen-Inverness ones meaning each unit spends less time consuming hydrogen over the course of the day.Alstom is still pushing the technology. They announced an Aventra version in 2021, but has not seem to have progressed?
Alstom and Eversholt Rail sign an agreement for the UK’s first ever brand-new hydrogen train fleet
New co-operation agreement aims to provide an initial fleet of 10 new hydrogen trains for UK Industry first will help UK and Scotland Government ambitions to decarbonise rail 10 November 2021 – Alswww.alstom.com
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
In a hydrogen train batteries can be charged by the fuel cell, but think the drive motors can also act as alternators topping up batteries when the train brakes.
The batteries can then help boost the output of the fuel cells to the drive motors when accelerating to aid efficiency.
I thought the Aventra announcement was an order announcement?
Agreed, it's time to be getting on with things.
The announcement was just a Memorandum of Understanding.
What replaces it, if anything?
Nothing as of yet. This is something the government have been called out on.
The latter two already pan up at Norwich and the first one terminates under the wires at Ipswich. None are particularly long and could be done by batteries.
IIRC they were picked because of a hydrogen hub being built round there…(Lowestoft??)
Could make sense as a trial line. Otherwise hydrogen is more expensive than batteries so should only be used where the latter isn't possible.
Not a real issue as you just recharge from battery storage which is trickle charged between services. Its not as if there are many trains requiring to be recharged so plenty of time to store energy. The termini in North of Scotland can easily provide a sub 500kW charging supply and probably more given they are awash with excess wind generation all too often.
Found the press release
conradenergy.co.uk
Nail. Head. Hit.
That is pretty much the idea. Hydrogen provides a way to store excess renewable electricity production. Rather than turning off wind farms because the grid can't cope, you can divert into hydrogen production.
A lot of those companies happen to have huge investments tied in gas distribution assets, so a cynic might suggest they are desperate to avoid those assets being stranded
An hourly service is 'not many trains' is it? Because that's the level of service on some of the routes where the TDNS recommended hydrogen (in Wales and Anglia - in Scotland they just left it as 'alternative traction' without specifying whether that would be battery or hydrogen yet). If you recharge everything at the halfway point on the route that is two trains an hour (one in each direction). If the batteries give sufficient range to only need to charge the batteries at termini then a battery train might be workable (although the turnaround time at Aberystwyth can be less than 10 minutes if the train is delayed). However if you also need to recharge mid-route then you are potentially increasing the journey time by having to stop to 'fill up'. Since most (perhaps all?) of the routes in question involve single track sections you might also find that the timetable no longer works because charging time makes the train miss it's slot over the single line and isn't at the passing loop when it needs to be to pass an oncoming service.
I was responding to the ability to provide charging capability in more rural areas not assessing the impact on schedules but your observations on operational issues are entirely relevant and would suggest are the key issues that undermine battery operation in this country. In Europe they would be content with having extra units that have time to layover to ensure fully charged.
Fair enough.
They would still need sufficient range to get to the end of the line in order to have the long layover to recharge (here in Wales, the battery would need to last from Shrewsbury to Pwllheli*) and may also need an additional siding to hold the extra unit being charged. Going back to the topic title - there are very few cases where a hydrogen train makes any sense but they aren't quite zero.
Going back to basics here, wasn't the hydrogen thing something of a distraction to shut up those annoying train spotter types who were always banging on about further electrification. I have a recollection from the previous decade of someone's query about further electrification being airily dismissed by a remark that by the 2020s hydrogen powered trains would be the norm.
They have plenty of fingers in the lithium industry too, it's not a conspiracy theory it's just people who don't understand energy density who think they can fix the weak points of an electric car
Oh absolutely, especially in countries like the US. There's a reason why the term "bionic duckweed" exists.
It won't (shouldn't) because of the shockingly poor round-trip efficiency if made from renewable energy, and because otherwise it is either made (using lots of power) from natural gas or is an industrial by-product from the fossil-fuel industry.