Shouldnt railways do more to generate various forms of power ?

[LeylandLen]

As I go around the country ; usually up and down the WCML between NW and London, I cant help noticing more and more wind turbines near the railway. There is a big one on the east side of WCML near Stafford. There are various ones in Lancashire ; some in the hills near Burnley. Also more and more solar panels in fields. There a large collection to the east of ECML between London and Peterborough ( can someone who knows it please give better location ?)
The network must have a lot of unused land that could accomodate wind turbines, and open land suitable for solar panels. New buildings should have solar panels .I know planning permission is needed in some locations.As we know, climate change is a big news story(as with the demonstrations in London over Easter) .We need better ways of generating the electricity we all use.I want to have solar panels. Are new houses being built with them , ?Think of how much solar power could be collected by new HS2 buildings. New EMUs parked unused overnight could have batteries to be charged overnight ; similar to electric cars we are being encouraged to buy.
Apologises if topic covered elsewher ; just my personal opinion. Comments welcome .

 

[gsnedders]

One thing that surprised me in parts of Japan was several of the railway companies having fairly large amounts of solar panels alongside the track in places, especially on south-facing cuttings and the like, typically raised above some vegetation (probably preserved to help maintain the stability of the cutting).

 

[cuccir]

The network must have a lot of unused land that could accomodate wind turbines, and open land suitable for solar panels. New buildings should have solar panels .I know planning permission is needed in some locations.

I agree with this principle. Small wind turbines and solar panels on otherwise unused land or buildings is one way of dealing with climate change.

However an issue with much of the railway land might be getting that electricity into the national grid. I'd have thought there'd be quite a cost, and difficult engineering work, to do this in a lot places. There would be some where it might be easy, but perhaps a lot of sites where it would be more complicated.

Think of how much solar power could be collected by new HS2 buildings.

Agreed; the cheapest way to install solar into a network is to do it at the point of construction.

 

[Dr Hoo]

It is quite ironic that the very first wagonways were on private land and relied on horse traction. The owners would also have enough paddocks, etc. to feed their own horses.

Somewhere along the way, around 1825, people lost the plot.

 

[DarloRich]

Think of how much solar power could be collected by new HS2 buildings

Somewhere along the way, around 1825, people lost the plot.

how many gigantawats do you think it takes to run the railway every year? EDF have several years left on a 10 year contract to supply NR with traction power (@ 3·2 TWh per year) which is generated via Nuclear power. Is that green enough? BTW NR are the biggest single user of electricity in the country.

Your solar panels and wind turbines wont generate that. At best they can ( and should!) provide power for buildings and facilities.

 

[CdBrux]

how many gigantawats do you think it takes to run the railway every year? EDF have several years left on a 10 year contract to supply NR with traction power (@ 3·2 TWh per year) which is generated via Nuclear power. Is that green enough? BTW NR are the biggest single user of electricity in the country.

Your solar panels and wind turbines wont generate that. At best they can ( and should!) provide power for buildings and facilities.

Not to disagree but it would be interesting to know the economics and practicalities for example of covering a depot roof or station shed roof in solar panels and using the electricity generated (stored in batteries if required) to charge battery trains. Is it something well out of practical capability at the moment or is it something that could be viable with improving technology?

 

[DarloRich]

Not to disagree but it would be interesting to know the economics and practicalities for example of covering a depot roof or station shed roof in solar panels and using the electricity generated (stored in batteries if required) to charge battery trains. Is it something well out of practical capability at the moment or is it something that could be viable with improving technology?

probably. But those batteries wont get you from Euston to Glasgow. Nuclear power will.

 

[najaB]

Is it something well out of practical capability at the moment or is it something that could be viable with improving technology?

In the middle - it's doable today, but you be lucky to get one days worth of running for even a single train, especially on winter days. The situation will get better as solar cells get more efficient and with newer battery technology, but you're never going to get around the fact that the UK is >50°N and the sun heads away down south for winter.

 

[DarloRich]

In the middle - it's doable today, but you be lucky to get one days worth of running for even a single train, especially on winter days. The situation will get better as solar cells get more efficient and with newer battery technology, but you're never going to get around the fact that the UK is >50°N and the sun heads away down south for winter.

sorry to be a dinosaur but Nuclear is the answer.

BTW - I agree entirely that depots and offices should be making the best possible use of the free generation sources we have around us. They should be plastered with turbines and panels.

 

[hexagon789]

sorry to be a dinosaur but Nuclear is the answer.

I agree that presently it's one of the most viable options, certainly it's far greener than coal, oil or gas-generated power.

 

[DarloRich]

I agree that presently it's one of the most viable options, certainly it's far greener than coal, oil or gas-generated power.

The problem is the government is unwilling or unable to invest the funds, time and emotional capital needed to build a new generation of nuclear power stations

 

[hexagon789]

I'm sure I've seen signals connected to either small wind-turbines or fitted with a solar panel on various lines in Glasgow. Does anyone know if these are able to supply enough power for the signal on their own and if so, should more signals be so-equipped but with either mains or battery back-up.

 

[hexagon789]

The problem is the government is unwilling or unable to invest the funds, time and emotional capital needed to build a new generation of nuclear power stations

Indeed, and many other European countries are either no longer building them or decommissioning them. I think until renewable energy has progressed sufficiently, nuclear needs to be strongly considered as a replacement for at least our coal-fired power stations.

 

[CdBrux]

probably. But those batteries wont get you from Euston to Glasgow. Nuclear power will.

OK, for suitable lines for battery powered trains, not ones where electrification is already completed (although very long term if batteries really work you could probably save quite a bit by not having to maintain all the electrification equipment but that's a very different topic!).

 

[edwin_m]

Not to disagree but it would be interesting to know the economics and practicalities for example of covering a depot roof or station shed roof in solar panels and using the electricity generated (stored in batteries if required) to charge battery trains. Is it something well out of practical capability at the moment or is it something that could be viable with improving technology?

Blackfriars station and Old Oak Crossrail depot are examples of recently-built rail facilities with solar roofs, and hopefully there will be more. I think this power is preferentially used for station facilities and any surplus would be fed into the grid - similarly power would be drawn from the grid whenever the station needed more than was available from the panels. No reason why the same can't be done for battery-powered trains, and the price of renewable energy is now comparable with other sources so the economics might stack up too. But you would keep a grid connection rather than just having a self-contained charging circuit which risks the train not getting enough power on a cloudy day or at night.

 

[30907]

I'm sure I've seen signals connected to either small wind-turbines or fitted with a solar panel on various lines in Glasgow. Does anyone know if these are able to supply enough power for the signal on their own and if so, should more signals be so-equipped but with either mains or battery back-up.

ISTR the first solar panel was trialled at a Distant somewhere on the Marches Line a fair few years ago.
Full-size wind turbines on land are IIRC currently discouraged by Government.

 

[hexagon789]

ISTR the first solar panel was trialled at a Distant somewhere on the Marches Line a fair few years ago.
Full-size wind turbines on land are IIRC currently discouraged by Government.

I've definitely seen a few solar panelled signals about, all new style LEDs.

 

[civ-eng-jim]

how many gigantawats do you think it takes to run the railway every year? EDF have several years left on a 10 year contract to supply NR with traction power (@ 3·2 TWh per year) which is generated via Nuclear power. Is that green enough? BTW NR are the biggest single user of electricity in the country.

Your solar panels and wind turbines wont generate that. At best they can ( and should!) provide power for buildings and facilities.

Presumably the 3.2TWh figure is just that one contract with EDF and not the total (electrical) energy consumption of the rail network? 3.2TWh "only" equates to an average power of ≈365MW or 150 typical wind turbines - Not an astronomical number. While renewable are intermittent and power demands on from the network aren't constant, I don't think it's right to say "Nuclear is the answer" with such conviction. There's no silver bullet with energy generation.

 

[InTheEastMids]

The problem is the government is unwilling or unable to invest the funds, time and emotional capital needed to build a new generation of nuclear power stations

No, the problem is the nuclear industry has made a pigs ear of making itself cost-competitive, despite many decades of trying. Agree that very cheap public sector capital would have reduced the effective energy cost ("LCOE" is the industry term) of nuclear. Each reactor (even if to the same design) needs massive amounts of bespoke work (and UK Gov approach of having potentially 3+ reactor designs from Areva, Hitachi and Toshiba only made this worse!).

Whereas, offshore wind is a mass production industry with modularity between the turbine and the foundation. This mass production approach has caused costs to plummet - partly because it becomes very straightforward and cheap to do things, partly that the much reduced risk means cheaper capital is available, and they can be built really quite quickly (E.ON & Siemens-Gamesa installed 60 turbines in 90 days in the Baltic), which avoids the massive discounting that happens when you try

Result: Offshore wind has absolutely mullered nuclear on cost, and such is the rate of change of the sector, it's made any technology that requires 10 years and great complexity to build and decades to pay back, completely un-investable.

 

[civ-eng-jim]

Result: Offshore wind has absolutely mullered nuclear on cost, and such is the rate of change of the sector, it's made any technology that requires 10 years and great complexity to build and decades to pay back, completely un-investable.

And then there's the decades (possibly centuries!) of decommissioning a nuclear power plant.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

While EDF can call on its French-generated nuclear power via the cross-channel grid interconnectors, it's a fiction to believe that Network Rail only uses nuclear power.
The railway can only use the mix that the grid supplies via its various access points.
In relation to that, Eurotunnel is part way through installing a 1GW connector to the French network (ElecLink) via the North tunnel.
There are still some UK nuclear plans being progressed, though the economic trend seems to be away from them at the moment.
There will still have to be a baseline of power generated from other than solar and wind, which are not constantly available, and nuclear is the greenest option for that.

 

[InTheEastMids]

Going back to the original question - there's quite a bit to unpack, I think the questions being asked (which we haven't really answered), are

1- Could the railway property portfolio generate more energy for Network Rail.
Yes - I would particularly single out solar PV installations on stations buildings, platform canopies and over car parks as being close to cost-effective now, depending on what happened to the power (e.g. could be used on-site, sold to charge EVs, exported to the grid etc...)
I'm pessimistic about wind power, because it's only really utility-scale turbines that are worth doing, and excess railway land tends to be in built-up areas, where you'd never get consent, and frequently low down where the yield would be useless.
In terms of embankments, cuttings an so on, I suspect it's relatively small bits of land, that are hard to get access to (being rural and part of the operational railway), so any O&M e.g. vegetation management could be quite expensive in practice

2- Could that energy generation make a significant dent in rail energy demand
No - to give an idea - using very round numbers, I looked at Leicester station. Based on the surface area, I think you'd get maybe 160 kW solar on each of the two platform canopies, plus maybe 700 kW by turning the car park into a giant solar car port, Let's say that's 1 MW. A good figure for UK solar production is maybe 900-1000 kWh annual generation per kW of solar installed, so let's use 1000 to keep the maths easy... gives about 1 million kWh generation (1 Gigawatt hour). Compared to our value of 3.2 TWh (3,200 GWh) means that Leicester station could generation 1/3200 of Network Rail demand. So, even if all stations were had the same potential as Leicester, 2500 of them wouldn't even cover 1% of the traction energy. However, it would be making a reasonable dent in all the non-traction energy. This is entirely expected, the key point about renewable energy is that it's diffuse, so any customer that is an intensive user will not be able to cover their demand with renewables. Luckily, there aren't many energy users as intensive as NR, most countries are not that urbanised, and the sea is flippin' massive, so you can park an awful lot of wind turbines out there without much bother.

3- Would that "green up" and/or decarbonise the rail system
"Green up" - yes, because - as above, commercially, the electricity supply contract is apparently with EDF for nuclear energy. Renewables are generally accepted as being greener than nuclear for the obvious reason that if a wind turbine fails catastrophically, you don't have to evacuate an inconveniently large area for a few decades.
"Decarbonise" - Not really, because nuclear power is already low-carbon. However, any renewable power would reduce the rail sector demand from the national grid, meaning the displaced nuclear power would go to other users, and reduce displace gas or coal-fired generation, so of course it is contributing to the decarbonisation of GB

 

[Richard Ingram]

2- Could that energy generation make a significant dent in rail energy demand
No - to give an idea - using very round numbers, I looked at Leicester station. Based on the surface area, I think you'd get maybe 160 kW solar on each of the two platform canopies, plus maybe 700 kW by turning the car park into a giant solar car port, Let's say that's 1 MW. A good figure for UK solar production is maybe 900-1000 kWh annual generation per kW of solar installed, so let's use 1000 to keep the maths easy... gives about 1 million kWh generation (1 Gigawatt hour). Compared to our value of 3.2 TWh (3,200 GWh) means that Leicester station could generation 1/3200 of Network Rail demand. So, even if all stations were had the same potential as Leicester, 2500 of them wouldn't even cover 1% of the traction energy. However, it would be making a reasonable dent in all the non-traction energy. This is entirely expected, the key point about renewable energy is that it's diffuse, so any customer that is an intensive user will not be able to cover their demand with renewables. Luckily, there aren't many energy users as intensive as NR, most countries are not that urbanised, and the sea is flippin' massive, so you can park an awful lot of wind turbines out there without much bother.

I think there is a maths error here, 1/3200 times 2500 is over 75%. Seems high, is there a problem with the production figures?

 

[mcmad]

I've definitely seen a few solar panelled signals about, all new style LEDs.

Not aware of any solar powered signals as the signalling system has its own discrete power supply separate from domestic supplies at a local level based on a 650V single phase feeder.

Are you thinking of rail lubricators which are solar and wind powered to enable them to be stand alone (via battery charging)

 

[InTheEastMids]

I think there is a maths error here, 1/3200 times 2500 is over 75%. Seems high, is there a problem with the production figures?

It's pleasing that somebody is paying attention. Let's check...

Does the 1 MW capacity seem reasonable?
OK I got about 9000m2 for the car park, and 1200m2 for each usable canopy, giving 11400m2 total.
Sunlight power is ~ 1kW/m2 (11400 kW), multiplying by 15% panel efficiency gives 1.7 MW, so 1 MW seems in the right ball-park, you can't cover every bit in generating panel.
1000 kWh/kWp annualised output gives 1,000,000 kWh annual output, which is 1,000 MWh or 1 GWh, rail consumption is still 3200 GWh.
1/3200 is 0.03%, so making the heroic assumption that Leicester is average, then 2500/3200 is 78%.
So the numbers do seem to stack up... Or have I missed something
Not all stations are like Leicester - you can also see it's dominated by car park surface area, so London commuter-land could be very high potential. Bedford St Johns will get you next to nothing.

So my maths is right, but forgetting the end bit has led me to the wrong conclusion in my earlier message. OK, few stations are the size of Leicester, so 78% is completely unrealistic, but it might be possible to cover something like 10-20% of today's rail traction demand, predominately by a campaign of carpet-bombing every station car park with solar PV. Although in 25kV land, where the rail system is driven off 400kV/25kV grid supply points and the stations from 400V or maybe 11kV feeders, commercially it's difficult to see how NR could self-consume, or contract with itself to do this.

 

[HSTEd]

The network must have a lot of unused land that could accomodate wind turbines, and open land suitable for solar panels. New buildings should have solar panels .I know planning permission is needed in some locations.As we know, climate change is a big news story(as with the demonstrations in London over Easter) .We need better ways of generating the electricity we all use.I want to have solar panels. Are new houses being built with them , ?Think of how much solar power could be collected by new HS2 buildings. New EMUs parked unused overnight could have batteries to be charged overnight ; similar to electric cars we are being encouraged to buy.
Apologises if topic covered elsewher ; just my personal opinion. Comments welcome .

The Feed in Tariff system has effectively closed, there is essentially no subsidy for small solar installations any more.

The whole point of a power grid is that people who use electricity do not have to worry about how it is produced.
The railway should be a railway and let the electricity people be electricity people.

 

[edwin_m]

The Feed in Tariff system has effectively closed, there is essentially no subsidy for small solar installations any more.

The whole point of a power grid is that people who use electricity do not have to worry about how it is produced.
The railway should be a railway and let the electricity people be electricity people.

As far as I'm aware the feed-in tariff was to encourage people to install small-scale generation until economies of scale rendered it unnecessary. Have those economies now happened, in which case a reasonably large installation ought to be commercially viable, or is it just the usual government cut?

I think it's reasonable for owners of land and buildings at least to think about whether those assets can be put to use in helping to decarbonise the UK grid as well as hopefully making or saving the owners a bit of money!

 

[hexagon789]

Not aware of any solar powered signals as the signalling system has its own discrete power supply separate from domestic supplies at a local level based on a 650V single phase feeder.

Are you thinking of rail lubricators which are solar and wind powered to enable them to be stand alone (via battery charging)

I'll try and take a picture next time I pass it, but I'm fairly certain it was a signal.

 

[Ken H]

I am sure the railway could use solar panels more for powering local needs, like stations. Put panels on a station roof to power the lights, electronics like ticket machines and PIS computers. because of transmission losses electricity generated somewhere remote but near a demand is a big saving.
And maybe have the hot water type panels for heating and domestic hot water.
But probably better to learn to turn stuff off. I bet my local small stations have all the lights on all night even though there is no passenger trains between 22:00 and 05:30. Maybe use motion sensors to turn the lights on when someone is moving around there. And new building should have natural daylight designed in so less lighting needed.

One downside. Solar panels are sellable on the second hand market - they do get nicked.

 

[Bald Rick]

As far as I'm aware the feed-in tariff was to encourage people to install small-scale generation until economies of scale rendered it unnecessary. Have those economies now happened, in which case a reasonably large installation ought to be commercially viable, or is it just the usual government cut?

The feed in tariffs ended not so much because of economies of scale, but because the technology has moved on and become cheaper.