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Power Plants On Rails for California
SoCalChris writes "According to this article on Wired.com, the Sierra Railroad is planning to use diesel train locomotives to produce power for California. Each of the 48 engines are expected to produce 2.1 megawatts of power for a thousand hours each year. Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most, so it doesn't have to be routed across the state through our power grid."
They need something mobile to counter the rolling blackouts.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
These devices were not designed to produce electricity, were they?
Seems to me this is a desperate attempt to look like they are doing something about the problem, but in fact are creating additional inefficiencies in the system, which can only come back to bite them in the ass later.
Reality has a liberal bias
Why does it sound like California's energy plan is some crazed mixture of Sim City and an RTS?
:)
"Quick Bob, move those two engines to San Jose quick."
"No, wait, power outage in Anahiem. Undo, undo!"
"I can't move it fast enough!"
"Lasso all the Amtracks and use your hotkeys!!!!"
Look at all of the valuable life skills computer games teach us!
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I live in Montreal, and during the 1999 Ice Storm that knocked out power to almost 300,000 people many communities that had access to the railway used diesel train locomotives to produce electricity for there area.
Despite the doom and gloom prophecies of the anti-nuke crowd, nuclear power generation has proved itself the least environmentally impacting electricity generating method time and again. Canada and France (while certainly not governmental systems to model) have come up with a system of genericized nuclear breeder facilities that provide clean, cheap power to their respective countries.
It's sad that Germany has made the decision to kill more birds and disrupt weather patterns with their latest misguided policies. And it's sad that the radical left in California has blocked nuclear power plant construction in their state.
A diesel train to generate electricity? Why not just legalize tobacco again and ruin everyone's lungs?
I have been pwned because my
Diesel locomotives are essentially big generators. They generate a large current which drives an electric motor. If I remember correctly they can go in either direction with equal power simply by reversing polarity.
Don't know if this is a great solution but locomotives definitely can produce lots of electric power.
It's only about 100 MW total. A fullblown power station produces at least 10 times that much. The capacity could help in some emergencies but mainly it's an uneconomical way of making electricity turned suddenly profitable by Enron-spawned manipulated price increases.
These trains were built to produce electricity. In fact, all modern locomotives are. the engines are designed to do one thing and one thing only: generate electricity. there are electric motors that do the pushing.
My father was an engineer for Burlington Northern before Santa Fe merged with them, and i remember as a child, going to the engine plant, and actually being INSIDE an engine cylinder - they're massive!
When i asked my dad why they were so big, he said "they need to be, they run all the time and it takes a lot of electricity to pull a train." being a smart lad of 8, i asked "don't the engines push the wheels?" through a lengthy discussion that i repeated with him over the years to get more detail, i learned that the engines produce electricity and the wheels are driven by electric motors.
It turns out that this is more efficient, in money, fuel effeciency, and repair time (imagine replacing the drive train if it were not electrically driven). all you do is replace a motor, instead of a drive shaft and/or transmission. (simplified explanation, of course)
It makes perfect sense for them to do this. Resourcefullness demonstrated brilliantly!
Naikrovek
alternative fuels like biodiesel ... but can also be made from other vegetable oils, animal fat and discarded cooking grease.
Cool, so now McDonald's can now change their signs to:
"Over 6 billion served...
And over 100,000 homes fueled"
The problem is that these locomotives will likely be put in areas where "public resistance" is weakest. Industrial areas? Cool. Out in the boonies? Even better.
But someday, I'm going to need power to my local grid and some big ass (yet cool looking) locomotive is going to park by my house running at full steam (heh) for a few days.
That might suck. I frankly won't care (gotta keep my UPS battery charged) but the cranky neighborhood association will.
Don't underestimate the usefulness of being able to move the move the trains around the power grid. There is significant work going on right now with minimising lossed on the power grid from transformer inefficiencies, line resistance, power thieves, metering errors, etc. These losses are hard to quantify in the real world but someone has to pay for them.
Often the power company will figure out the overall losses for the system and then divide that cost up equally among the users of the grid. The problem is that people close to the power plant get hosed because the pay for losses that happen further into the system then they are, so essentially they are paying for power they do not use. Being able to do this will help appease those customers who are close to the power plants because the trains can be moved to the other end of the grid to minimise losses.
On a related note, the only countries that I know of where there are real government-legislated economic incentives to minimise such losses are Australia, Spain, and one of Finland or Norway, I can't remember which. (As a silly north american, I tend to confuse the two.) These places are where much the real work in reducing losses is coming from.
Some people bash California as being a bunch of ignorant liberal fucks. This is only partially true. There's a magical land in this very state where the water runs pure and the electricity comes cheap and the migrant workers, well, they are neither heard nor seen. This magical land is called Sacremento. From this shining beacon of cockjockery shines the shiny light of dumbfuckery. See up in Sac Town where all the tough choices are made they're insulated from the rest of the state's problems.
Using diesel electric locomotive engines to boost a local power station has cool geek factor to it but it is a stupid and short term fix for a very serious long term problem. The descision to deregulate power is a failed experiment yet our plucky leadership in Sac Town don't see it that way, they're rather spend billions dollars bailing out these failed and failing utility companies and their shit management. It is sad watching this all happen. It doesn't matter how you vote locally either, the State Assembly doesn't do anything to curb the jackassery coming from the Governor's office.
What the state needs is regulated and less externally dependant electrical power. The state has been growing temendously in the past 20 years but hasn't seen the construction of a single new power plant, nuclear or otherwise. The population in the bay area has boomed as well as the populations of San Diego and Orange counties. A lot of people are moving into Riverside and San Bernadino counties out towards the deserts where they run their air conditioner 24/7 and water their lawns in the middle of the day because they don't know how to live in a desert. These sort of people are a huge strain on the power grid in Southern California and makes the boards of SoCal Edision cream their pants. Running a couple trains down there during the summer to give some extra go juice to people does not solve the problem. Nevada has its own burgeoning population in and around Las Vegas they've got to provide power and water for, they aren't going to able to export power to California for too much longer.
The state needs more eletrical plants. There are plenty of clean-ish power plant designs in common use around the world that the state could use for a basis for new plants. It is getting ridiculous that these retarded stopgap measures are being suggested and implimented when the real solution is so clear cut. There's plenty of plants that can be upgraded to use cleaner technology while at the same time increasing their output. It'd be a much better use than billion dollar bonds being spent to cover the cost of crooked deregulated utility companies.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
But this was done recently for electric power; in 1998, a disastrous ice storm destroyed a fair portion of the electric distribution system in Québec; in a suburb of Montréal, diesel locomotives were lent to the city to provide emergency power; they even ran the engines on the frozen street without any track at all!!! (other links here and here).
Nuclear waste is as much a problem as air pollution. And with more Nuclear Power Plants in operation it will continue to be a problem. Radioactive byproducts are not something that can be easily overlooked. Ask the people of Nevada about the Yukka Mtn Project.
The key is to conserve energy and to invest in NEW technologies. Learn to use our sources of energy more efficiently with less pollution. The dangers inherent in nuclear energy plus the radiocative waste breeder plants produce make Nuclear Power repellent.
info on
nuclear waste and the Yukka Mountain NWD
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
In my state (not in the USA) the stop-gap measure was old jet engines burning kerosine (or some similarly expensive fuel). Like California there was no excuse for it to happen, just incredibly stupid and short sighted actions on the part of those in control.
Diesel engines (and gas engines) have an optimum RPM, where they are the most efficient.
In something that is fuel/electric hybrid, you can use the fuel section at an optimal way to produce power, and then regulate the electric how you want.
Same thing goes on I think in like an M1 tank.. a gas turbine (jet) engine runs at constant speed producing power.
The State of California in 2001 produced 265059 Gigawatt-hours, or almost 3000 times more electric power than these trains are supposed to produce. Even solar energy contributes more to California; 638 GW-hours!
California Gross System Electricity Production for 2001
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
They cannot be overlooked, or ignored, certainly. But that's a GOOD thing.
It's easy to ignore the waste from a coal plant, or a diesel plant. We don't even KNOW the full environmental impact of these things.
The point is, with nuclear, at least we can bottle the waste and keep tabs on it.
A number of gas turbine plants scattered about Manhattan. The plants are small (relatively... only a block in size) and produce maybe 100 megawatts (don't quote me on the exact number). Oh... and they're really loud.
Because everyone has complained about the current, stationary natural gas powerplants polluting the air, they will take them and put them on flatbed cars and drive them up and down the train tracks. This will have the double benefit of bailing out Amtrak and allowing the deisel generators to continue to belch out known harmful chemicals all day and all night, further allowing the government to completely ignore solar power.
I just don't get why the state that has most of the Mojave Desert can't set up a decent solar energy system, at least for the bottom half of the state.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
But then you look at the energy required to give that waste the proper velocity... is it worth it?
You would think that after the rolling black/brownouts they've experienced in the last year or so that Californians would be more conscientious of the need to conserve energy wherever possible.
/. readers from California reading this who care to offer a first hand perspective? Are you using just as much energy as before the current crisis? Have you taken any measures to cut down on your consumption? What's your local government doing to promote energy efficiency?
But, from what my friends in SF and LA tell me, the average Joe is still getting through as much power as before, if not more, despite the rise in the price of electricity.
Any
Some detailed on the ground information would be appreciated.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
at least diesel is infinetly less polluting than coal and yet coal is the largest source of power in the states (i am not sure about california specificaly).
So it could be worse, they could be making more coal plants.
Hydraulic transmissions, which are variable-displacement pumps driving hydraulic motors, are sometimes used for low-speed switch engines, but there's a vibration problem with hydraulic transmissions that's kept them as slow-speed devices. (I once worked in a hydraulic R&D facility, which built, among other things, prototype locomotive transmissions.)
But electric motors can produce full torque at zero speed. So they're just what you need to start up a freight train. A variable-speed electrical drive in locomotive size was a problem for a long time. Until about 1950, all you could do is switch windings into various combinations of parallel and series. Later, ignitrons (the big mercury-vapor member of the gas-discharge triode tube family) were tried. It took a while for semiconductors to work up to handling megawatts. BART was the first railroad with semiconductor motor drives, and they burned out giant triacs regularly for years.
The latest generation of locomotives finally does it right - the motors are synchronous AC three-phase motors driven by variable-frequency inverters in a closed-loop system. This synchronizes all the motors on all the axles (the motors are down in the trucks, near the wheels), which provides synchronized all-wheel drive. Synching all the wheels nearly doubled drawbar pull (the locomotive spec that matters), and the limits of couplers have now been reached.
Despite this, using spare diesel engines to generate power is a basically dumb idea except in emergencies. The efficiency isn't that good and diesels pollute more than any of the other popular forms of power generation.
I'm clueless, I guess. In morse it's "73DEN0NB". What the hell is that?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Wouldn't it be quicker just to build traditional power plants somewhere in the state and transfer power to needy locations as necessary? Doesn't electricity travel faster than a speeding locomotive? This seems comparable to the Postal Service announcing that you can now print out your emails and mail them to recipients using a special stamp.
A real newsworthy breakthrough would be the announcement that they're going to build a giant solar energy collector in the desert along Interstate 10. It's not like there's any shortage of space... there are approximately 2 towns in the couple hundred miles between Palm Springs and the Arizona border.
And here is an interesting article explaining more in depth about how diesel-electric locomotives work, and once you read this you will understand more of why this isn't nearly as innefficient as it sounds.
I'm guessing it's his ham radio call sign.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
why else would California depend so much on Washington state and others for their power,
God. I'm from Yakima, WA. We got royally screwed over by those idiotic californian bureaucrats. Here in WA we have always had clean, cheap power from all the hydroelectric dams along the Columbia and Snake. They also provide us with our water to irrigate our rich but dry farmland. Anyway, our power was so cheap that we had power-hungry aluminum plants up the ying-yang. Which provided tens of thousands of jobs in Eastern Washington.
Then we were forced to sell power to the Californians to bail them out of their own stupidity. This raised prices and caused most of the aluminum plants to close. There is a small town of about 2,000 a ways south of where I live. Goldendale. It used to have a huge ALCOA plant by John Day Dam there that provided about a thousand jobs. Then the electric rates rose and it shut down, putting all of it's workers out of a job. Now the majority of goldendale's population is on some kind of welfare.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
First of all, it's "Sacramento." If you're going to talk about it, spell it right. Second off, I don't know where you're getting the idea that electricity is cheap in Sacramento. My SMUD bill (yes, I live here. I'm 2 blocks from the Capitol building.) is most certainly not cheap. Have you noticed all of the idiot protesters outside that vote DOWN power plants? How about the Sierra Club? The "NIMBY" folks? Deregulation has ceased to exist. It's over.
Also, there have been quite a few power plants built. In fact, SMUD has one on McClellan Air Force Base that just opened up about a year ago. Where the hell did you get the idea that not a single new power plant has been built?
Insulated from the state problems.. hardly. I walk downtown every single day and see our state problems right in front of me. The politicians walk around and see the same exact problems. Whether they do anything about it is another story.
My father is retired from the Railroad and I remember him telling me one year that for one reason or another (don't recall those details, but if you like I could make them up), the office building in the yard had to cut back on it's electrical use. So they pulled two engines off of some side tracks, pulled them right up next to the building and had the electricians wire them up to the office. They ran them that way for several months.
And be glad that free energy schemes don't work. If they did, and at large scale, they'd be the one technology with a real potential to significantly hasten the heat-death of the universe. Everything brings that event closer, but most ways of getting energy are effectively limited. Entropy is pollution, too.
Bruce Perens.
That's the funniest part about the article. On the second page it says there is an energy glut in California because the idiots in the White House convinced everyone there was a huge energy shortage and built all these new gas turbine plants which quickly resulted in overcapacity because . . . wait for it --there was no real electricity shortage to begin with. Electricity technology is ancient, prices change every day especially with hucksters in positions of power.
The fundamentals of physics and 19th century engineering didn't suddenly get upended two years ago in California. No, it seems a certain set of individuals in Texas that had so much cash they put one of their boys in the Oval Office were fucking with energy prices. Duh.
This locomotive outfit is missing the point. They never will be called into action because the game has been played out. See, you got to keep your eye on the ball son. Now tell me, which shell is the nut under? Oh, lookie there, it's the big white dome in DC. Well, thanks for all ya'lls IRAs and 401ks we gots to go now.
Because energy efficieny is an important concept.
diesel engines have terrible power bands -- whilst a average automobile engine can produce useable torque between 500-6000 RPM; big diesel engines only do so between ~100 - 600? (the numbers escape me -- but the spirit is the same) -- hence to be able to produce reasonable torque between rest and cruising speed, you need something like around 80 different gear ratios. for everyone who does not drive stick and have NO idea what gear ratios are... erm... cars usually have ~3-6 different ratios. the transmission would be HUGE! and the loss phemomenal
m
furthermore -- when the train is at rest -- remember that the engine only produce torque around 100 rpm -- this means you need some serious clutch plate to be able to handle that much torque. in the end motors are much better because they have a flat (pretty much) torque band (until drop off at high RPMs -- but that's above cruising speed anyhow).
the other great they they can do easily with a motor is braking -- when you applies the brakes the electricity flows from the motor(s) and through a large resistor mesh (generally a couple ohms), this mesh will heat up and there is a fan on top of the train spcifically used to cool this mesh. realld neat stuff.
for a lot more info check out here: sorry it's late and i don't want to deal with tags -- so copy and paste: http://www.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive.ht
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I am not authoratative on this -- but if i still remember the EE theories -- usually inverters are not that efficient -- so you are dropping some efficiency right there that you may not have accounted for. also to transmit power, they need to bump up the voltage to ~100-150K volts -- so the transformers will drain some more juice (granted transformers usually do near-ideal coupling). but i suspect it will be hard to haul around a transformer -- more importantly it's hard to tap into the high voltage lines -- so it will probabbly transmit at lower voltages -- lower voltage transmission loses much more power in the lines, so again not efficient. hence, while an interesting plan, i see it as a *very* temporary solution... not something you would want to keep around for too long.
i mean... i know it's expensive -- but build a f** nuke plant... nevada dump site is a couple hours away now ANYHOW... sigh...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Multi-use urban areas. Cool! Uh.. as long as it's only in new, "planned communities". I paid too much for my house with a white picket fence. Don't want my property value to go down.
Desegregation. Uh... except when our school's SAT scores plummet the first few years after bussing starts.
It's the way of things. We all want freedom, independence, and somehow we also want social cohesion, all without any sacrifice. There's always more in the horn of plenty, just keep diggin' around and you'll find it somehow. ;-)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is the state that the world (as in "outside of America") applauds for its crackdown on car emissions and its harsh CO2 regulations?
:-/
And the same state is now using DIESEL TRAINS to produce ELECTRICITY?
Jeez. You'd think the place was run by politicians or something.
What the state needs is regulated and less externally dependant electrical power. It also needs honest utilities that don't ship all of their profits to out of state branches o their web and then try to claim they are going bankrupt unless you give them a lot of money to keep them from making the whole state go dark.
No, it isn't. Nuclear waste sits there and does nothing. Air pollution affect the whole world. The "dangerous for millenia" contingent is spreading pure FUD. After a couple of hundred years the waste is no more radioactive than the ore from which it came.
Uranium mine waste is rather nasty stuff. Whilst it was rock it was not especially dangerous, but mine tailings tend to be dust, slurry, etc.
What physical form in the waste from a reactor in? Especially if fuel is reprocessed. Some of it make not be left alone for a couple of hundred years. e.g depleated uranium munitions which contain U236...
I'll stop pledging "Under God" when they pry it from my cold, dead lips.
Remove "Under God" and I rescind my pledge
So, you are an advocate of oppressive non-secular states?
PLease, I invite you to join the rest of us here in modern reality. Cast away your boogie-men and think for yourself.
<Krusty the Clown>Bwa ha ha haaaaa, ha ha, ha, huhhhhh</Krusty the Clown>
But seriously for their own good Bush should have 200% import tarriff on crude oil and petrolum (gas). Chicken and egg - don't need fuel efficient cars until gas is expensive, gas is cheap because everybody has gas guzzlers (and forces the politians to let them keep them - drilling in Alaska, etc.).
I'm not convinced that the US Govt proper knew about WTC in advance. It's pretty obvious that a trashed economy leads to disillusionment and a Government change, and since the Government controls the military, why not use it if it makes the voters happy - what they hay!However I believe binLaden has outsmarted everybody, historically the only way to collapse a democracy is by spreading fear, causing a counter-effect of inducing blind patriotism, which in turn leads to a totalitarian Government, and in the following consolidation of power voila - a dictatorship. Remember Germany was a democracy until late in WW2. BinLaden is a very very clever man.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
until we can have a surface-to-orbit transport safe/effective/cheap enough to lift the waste to orbit, then, presto, send the whole kit and kaboodle into the Sun.
The problem is that if *any* of your waste rockets explodes, you get a fallout plume worse than just about any conceivable nuclear reactor accident.
Encasing nuclear waste to survive a train wreck is one thing. Encasing it to survive a thousand tonnes of rocket fuel exploding, or re-entry if your rocket fails just the wrong way, is quite another.
While the chance of any given rocket failing is quite low, you're not going to get it below about 1% or so. If you're dealing with *all* waste by launching it into space, you're going to have accidents.
I say bury it in the continental shield, which has been geologically stable for the past 3 billion years or so.
Well, I dunno about Bruce, and his practices, but I for one, feel all sorts of comfortable calling anything that violates conservation of mass or energy fake.
One summer I camped out for 5 weeks (winter rental expired and it was a while before I could find another place.) Being a person who likes quiet, I went all the way to the back of the campground. (Stay with me ... this is relavant.) About 2am, I thought a 747 was landing next to my tent. The ground was shaking and I could hardly think straight. 100 yards away was a switching track where trains waited to pass another. Idling wasn't bad, but when they kicked that diesel into gear.......
NIMBY is right. I would never allow one of these things to be running 24x7 within a mile from where I live.
But I do love trains......no.....really.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I think this is an interesting idea. Candidates for mayor and city councils should be forced to compete on Sim City 3000 (on the hardest levels), and then voters can see how well they do managing a city and use this information to help them decide how to vote. After all, if a potential mayor can't run a pretend city, what chance does he have with the real thing?
The huge 3(?) story dump trucks used in major quarry operations also use electric motors with diesel generators to supply the electric power. It's actually more efficient to run the generator at a set level, and use the motor to vary the drive level needed.
This is the principle behind consumer-level hybrid electric vehicles (sorta). The main difference is that diesel locos and those dump trucks use a serial system (diesel motor->generator->electric motor) while consumer hybrids use a more complex parallel system (gas motor->drivetrain, electric motor->drivetrain, motor->electric motor as generator->batteries. Costs for hybrids could be cut if auto companies were willing to sacrifice gas engines and embrace the electric motor, rather than keeping gas engines and coupling an oversized starter motor to it...
Launch it with an electromagnetic rail gun. Extreme high speeds, no rockets.
So is coal mine waste, and burning coal puts FAR more radiation into the environment than nuclear power.
Thus radioactive pollution appears to be an argument against both nuclear and coal.
If we were sensible enough to reprocess spent fuel and burn up the plutonium, the waste issue would be even less important.
You'd first need to build reprocessing facilities which don't leak badly.
If wealth distribution is stopped then you'll have to shoot starving women and children for stealing bread. I'm happy to pay my high European taxes, so then when I get mugged I can whine about the guy being an asshole. My friend had his fries stolen by a 8-year old starving Kosovan illegal immigrant, he can't legally work and he's not entitled to welfare, he's just doing what is necessary to survive so I can't complain about that.
The Japanese in Tokyo have far more money than the Europeans, and yet they buy small Nissan cars, not Mercedes. It depends on the culture, and of course a Mercedes is nice and comfotable, even a starving Ethiopean would appreciate the air conditioned cabin, but a Japanese guy driving through Tokyo would experience great inconvenience at having such a big car, he would say, "Take your S-600 and shove it up your big fat American ass, I'm sticking with my Nissan". Assuming that everybody wants to be like you is a mistake many Americans make.People don't mind American stuff, it's the arrogant attitude they can't take. For instance in Japan the rule is bow deeply and be silent, dosile and respectful unless you know someone well. Mentioning the Yakuza is a joke in US chinatown, but NOT in Tokyo, same as shouting "binLaden kicked your ass HA HA HAAAA!" when you're in the Empire State building isn't funny. When America has to backtrack after saying "We're the best" everyone thinks you Americans are stupid, arrogant little children. After years of Americans boasting about having the best corporate governance structure and corporate integrity and productivity, US officials are now in Europe with their heads held low asking us how we audit companies so they can incorporate new accountancy rules into SEC. America tells us they're the best, America gets shafted, then turns to Europe for help. And still you're arrogant and believe you're better than us. Man oh man. OK America, session's over, get off my psychiatrist's couch and ask the secretary for a return appointment, you're going to be coming here a *long* time ;-) ... then again I have no right to tell you how to be, but you don't know how you look till you look in the mirror so I have provided a mirror for you (see above)
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
"though I don't really see why they can't just run extra cabling between new static power stations to make up a better-connected grid?"
One word, NIMBY.
No one wants a big transmission tower running through their backyard (and environazis don't want any running through "wilderness" lands).
I kind of like this better.
The people who voted down, or sued to prevent, construction of new power lines, or power plants near them get to look at, listen to, and smell a few big diesel engines with 36 trashcan-sized-cylinders per engine roaring away.