I’m a bit confused on the utility of this. Is it actually any cheaper to have the infrastructure for a hydrogen powered train when direct electric power is a well understood technology? I usually think of hydrogen as being most useful in non-rail contexts where you can’t depend as much on where the vehicle will be running.
This might provide a cheap way to put in rail without having to provide electric power along it. I imagine building out electric grid along the rail line is a lot more costly and time consuming.
I wonder if the stronger use case will be putting trains on preexisting tracks that might not already have the overhead space for overhead lines along the entire track. I’m guessing that it’s far easier to electrify as you’re building than to retrofit a line.
I looked this up and found this article. Sounds like Germany just opened a line as well, though it looks like it’s more of an interurban line so the headline is technically correct about China being first for an urban train. It sounds like Germany thinks the sweet spot for hydrogen is lines that don’t get heavy use. My guess is that the locomotives would cost more, but if fewer are running per track-mile that would be justified over the cost of electrification of the line.
Yeah that makes sense, using existing infrastructure that’s built for self powered locomotives is a lot easier this way.
Hydrogen is a potential mitigation for the peak use vs peak production issue of renewables. Think of hydrogen tanks less like conventional fuel but batteries, with higher energy density by volume and simpler engineering and less resource intensivs to manufacture compared to lithium ion.
Also, if you have a lot of tracks, the resistive and inductive losses of overhead wiring can actually put your energy efficiency below batteries or even hydrogen. Also, maintaining overhead wires and associated poles and gantries can both be more expensive and consume more resources than batteries or hydrogen. It can double the infrastructure costs per distance of track. What is the most efficient or cost effecrive system all things considered depends on factors like how much track you have, how often the trains run and how much power they draw, and whether you can use any tricks like dynamic electrification that turn off when no train is passing by. Though this is more of a problem with long distance heavy rail that runs less frequently.
The same question was asked in case of any new tech. Yet we aren’t moving around by horse carriages anymore, so the answer is “yeah, eventually”.
Sure, but sometimes it takes a while to figure out which use cases a given technology is best for. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it should replace existing solutions for all possible cases. The horse-drawn carriages is just a case where the replacements were much better, but that’s not always going to be the case.
Yeah but they apparently are convinced it will be feasible enough to actually build that. I can see the potential too for city trains, since the electric grid is the most complicated and vulnerable part of it, if we remove that from the equation, city train lines became much easier to build and maintain.
If nothing else, it’s good to try it out to see how well it works. As you said, the electric grid is a significant vulnerability. When we recently had a cold snap, the light rail line shut down briefly because they could not keep the overhead lines sufficiently ice free.
