Yes, the key is working out what the 'core' electrified network *needs* to look like, what the future electrified network *should* look like, and then what other OLE we can usefully put up to avoid the situation @Benjwri raises occurring - where BEMUs are seen as a substitute for lines that should have been electrified, instead of what they should be seen as - extensions of the electrified network.
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Future of the GWR electrification
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HSTEd
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Electrification of a railway is seen as a useful method of signalling investment in an area, which is why the electrification schemes that are still occuring are centred in areas where such political signalling is useful to governments. See Transpennine or the MIdlands with the glacial midland main line programme.
The creeping schemes are progressing so slowly that they will not achieve major electrification in any reasonable timeframe.
I don't think anything beyond minor work can be expected on the Great Western any time soon
There is sufficient electrification in many of these cities to allow enough battery or electrodiesel operation to seriously cut pollution in those areas if the government or railway wishes it be so.
Only Bristol, Sheffield and Nottingham lack electrification to take a big chunk of the pollution away.
Newcastle, Leeds etc might benefit from a few extra miles, but hardly an enormous new network.
You might make an argument for Birmingham Moor street, but even there, a handful of miles is likely enough.
Some cities might benefit from a handful more route miles of electrification, but there is little scope for substantial new electrification programmes on this basis.
It is almost certainly going to be cheaper for the railway to buy longer ranged battery multiple units than pay the costs the 25kV programme is running up.
EDIT:
I agree this is wandering off topic, so we shouldn't clog up the thread.
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GRALISTAIR
Established Member
This is where Battery Trains are going to be very dangerous. From a government perspective the passengers will see shinny new trains quickly, and part of the leasing cost is offset by the trains you're already leasing, so the cost for your term is fairly minimal. The long term costs aren't your government's problem. Meanwhile electrification is expensive now, before passengers see the benefits and causes disruption. Meanwhile it likely won't be delivered till your term is over, and if you aren't still in power the credit will probably go to whoever is then. Battery trains smell of the exact instant gratification, long term consequences which we see more and more in policy making at the moment.
Whilst battery trains will be part of the solution, the power requirements for them will mean a greater power demand over if we just build more electrification.
It's why the GWR area needs more electrification than it currently has.
Put simply you need more power to run a light from a battery source than if you plug it directly to the mains. The reason being is that there's energy losses associated with charging the battery.
Whilst the losses per mile would be small, if you try and run trains for thousands of miles a day over a year the numbers add up significantly.
It's why I'd we want to decarbonise our transport emissions thinking that we can do so by solely using EV's is a bad move.
If we had reliable electric public transport, due to the fact that the numbers being carried out vehicle are far higher than typically are carried in a car, then our electricity requirements would be lower.
Yes we're never going to remove all cars from our roads, but just stabilising the numbers would help, even reducing car based travel by 2% would be a massive step in the right direction.
Getting it down by 10% would massively benefit everyone.
Traffic in term time would be like school holidays, with more people walking and cycling the health of the nation would be better, with less demand for parking cars more development could happen in the same land area, people would likely have more money (average cost of car ownership is £3,600 per year, yet the average distance each adult travels each year is 6,000 miles - however the cost to run all public transport per tax payer is about £1,000).
The reason electrification is expensive is that free know how to do it, so we have to train people to do it, but then don't have more work for them once a scheme finishes so they do something else and so new people need training when another project comes along. People are slow to do a task if they are new at it, as they do it more they tend to get faster, by having to train lots of people the skilled staff aren't able to get on with the work needed, combined this means the work takes longer and pushes the costs up.
If we had a 30 year program of electrification people would have a job for life if they wanted it, by the time that program came to an end there would be enough maintenance work to keep the majority employed.
It's why the GWR area needs more electrification than it currently has.
Put simply you need more power to run a light from a battery source than if you plug it directly to the mains. The reason being is that there's energy losses associated with charging the battery.
Whilst the losses per mile would be small, if you try and run trains for thousands of miles a day over a year the numbers add up significantly.
It's why I'd we want to decarbonise our transport emissions thinking that we can do so by solely using EV's is a bad move.
If we had reliable electric public transport, due to the fact that the numbers being carried out vehicle are far higher than typically are carried in a car, then our electricity requirements would be lower.
Yes we're never going to remove all cars from our roads, but just stabilising the numbers would help, even reducing car based travel by 2% would be a massive step in the right direction.
Getting it down by 10% would massively benefit everyone.
Traffic in term time would be like school holidays, with more people walking and cycling the health of the nation would be better, with less demand for parking cars more development could happen in the same land area, people would likely have more money (average cost of car ownership is £3,600 per year, yet the average distance each adult travels each year is 6,000 miles - however the cost to run all public transport per tax payer is about £1,000).
The reason electrification is expensive is that free know how to do it, so we have to train people to do it, but then don't have more work for them once a scheme finishes so they do something else and so new people need training when another project comes along. People are slow to do a task if they are new at it, as they do it more they tend to get faster, by having to train lots of people the skilled staff aren't able to get on with the work needed, combined this means the work takes longer and pushes the costs up.
If we had a 30 year program of electrification people would have a job for life if they wanted it, by the time that program came to an end there would be enough maintenance work to keep the majority employed.
Car batteries can be charged overnight when there is surplus electricity. If road congestion is initially reduced, suppressed demand will cause it to recur unless there is sufficiently large road capacity expansion or road pricing (which I would support but which is almost certainly publicly unacceptable as a general policy).
Annetts key
Established Member
We may have surplus electricity overnight at the moment, but as the number of EV owners of users increases, that situation will not last forever...
There isn't going to be any significant road network expansion unless the politicians change their minds, which I think is unlikely.
Snow1964
Established Member
Most depots are wired with sidings all on one feed (might be 3 or 4 adjacent sidings on same isolator), on assumption only 1 or 2 trains slowly moving at any one time. Because of the slow speed, the power drawn is low.
Although Europe is starting to see some 8MW locomotives, I think most of UK has a lower limit of about 6.5MW per train (and some parts it's nearer 4MW limit) If start charging multiple trains in adjacent sidings at same time overnight, likely to exceed depot supply capacity.
The other thing is most BEMU designs can only do around 50-65 miles off the wires (perhaps rated at 70-80 miles range in favourable conditions), and are likely to make multiple journeys each day, so overnight charging is only going to be part solution. On cold winter days (when lot of electric saloon is required) those range figures might even be lower.
For GWR might need to add third rail charging (for regular services to Gatwick, Portsmouth, Weymouth), although would probably need to uprate Dorchester area power supply and extend third rail into Dorchester West platforms (unless they add few miles of wires near Frome).
Agreed about road expansion. My point was only that feasible modal shift won’t address congestion.
InTheEastMids
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Lineside batteries should be part of the toolkit here. They can be used (amongst other things) to increase traction supply at times of peak demand and/or reduce the supply capacity from the grid for a given level of train service. They could also be remote from the grid connection along the line to provide voltage support. The important thing to remember is that traction power demand is very peaky and then has margin added, meaning Network Rail is probably paying for a lot of capacity on the national grid (per kW, per day) that, most of the time, it does not use.
It is much, much easier and cheaper to build a battery system in a field next to the railway, than do electrification works on the railway.
This was at least in part due to a sustained PR campaign by (particularly) the gas network operators, fossil fuel interests and subsidy grifters. The laws of physics were glossed over for quite a while.
In theory I agree. However, lineside batteries could also be set up to intervene based on things like demand rate of change or voltage droop.
Given the wide usage of stationary batteries and SCADA in critical infrastructure applications, this might be easier (and quicker) for conservative railway engineers to accept.
This is - in many ways - a good thing. Deferral of capital works is not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps there's uncertainty in how demand will play out. Perhaps an interim solution is needed until traditional electricity networks can give you what you want, where you want it. Perhaps they can avoid the capacity issues altogether because they only occur on paper, or for a short time each day. If this kind of solution was already off the shelf, I wonder whether it'd have been implemented to enable that extra Avanti Liverpool service, for example.
Annetts key
Established Member
That does not change the inefficiencies of converting AC to DC, charging the battery, Then converting DC to AC. Each step will have losses. And of course there is the limited life of the battery. Plus the cost of all the required infrastructure.
A conventional OHL electrification system has lower losses.
As to the specification of the capacity, that's subject to diversity calculations. Electrical supply infrastructure has two ratings, continuous load and non-continuous load. The non-continuous load figure will be larger than the continuous load figure. And the supply contract will take the actual requirements into account.
Deferral is often a bad thing. Costs will increase over time. Putting in interim solutions may well cost significantly more in the long run. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be considered.
InTheEastMids
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Agree with all that, but efficiency is not the only factor. Otherwise the rail network would have got rid of inefficient diesel traction decades ago.
Battery lifetime has improved significantly, particularly due to better management systems and also a shift in chemistry to LFP and - in future - potentially sodium ion.
Agree - it's more complex than I suggested in terms of diversity calculations and both technical and commercial limits
However, the point still stands that batteries are already being deployed to enable power systems to deliver in excess of the contracted supply capacity. This is what GWR's trial is doing (where there also isn't any load diversity), it is being done for things like EV charging hubs, and it is public domain that Network Rail are at least been considering it (e.g. see https://bidstats.uk/tenders/2024/W20/822673519, link is to a Prior Information Notice that NR issued in 2024 relating to battery energy storage).
A significant proportion of grid flexibility services are supplied by grid scale batteries and, as I think was observed up thread, many more are coming online.
The existing OHLE supplies will be made possible by these assets, which provide capacity services to the grid.
Battery wear is monitored and accounted for in the lifetime of the asset.
If they weren't hugely profitable (spoiler: they are), you wouldn't see so many of them appearing.
brad465
Established Member
The spending review is next month and will set out plans for infrastructure. Word on the street is while department spending will be very stingy, infrastructure will be generous apparently. Granted this doesn't just cover railways, but roads, energy, etc., too, but if GWR and other electrification projects are to happen anytime soon, they will be announced in this statement. If they're not, they most likely won't be announced till the next election.
GraphitProjekt
Member
A little tangential sorry, but when GWML was electrified in the 2010s, did they retain the grid connection at Hayes? I would assume not but the online sectional appendix (last updated in March) still lists neutral sections at Airport Junction. Is Hayes 132/25 still feeding the airport branch?
Trainbike46
Established Member
Fingers crossed then for some electrification projects around the country, including hopefully around Bristol and Exeter!
InTheEastMids
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In fairness, most of this energy investment is OPM (other people's money), as capital spending on energy infrastructure generally ends up with billpayers (yes I know these are more or less the same people)
Most of the money (about 2/3) spent by Government on energy in 23/24 actually went on nuclear. Out of a total Government spend (DESNZ plus its arms length bodies) of £6.5Bn, over £3Bn was Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and another £1Bn was on Sizewell C. Trying to remember whether wind farms, solar panels and batteries will take decades and billions of pounds of taxpayer investment to remove and make safe...
(This data is from p9 of a recent NAO publication linked here: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/energy-security-net-zero-overview-2023-24.pdf)
Back on topic. I think what would be more help than anything is clarity on a pipeline of schemes that Govt want delivered, that is realistic given current capacity, plausible growth and potential wider skills issues, particularly around HV-qualified people). In the next 5 years, it seems MMLE, TPRU and HS2 (and maybe EWR) will be in focus for electrification, so imagine GW works will queue up behind them. So is Govt's expectation to accelerate, build capacity do more STK/year? Or stick at about the what we're doing now? Or what?
59CosG95
Established Member
I think there was also something about the viaduct over the A4 rdbt immediately west of the station, which (IIRC) is also listed.
swt_passenger
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There are listed (including Grade 1) viaducts and bridges all over the country that have been successfully fitted with OHLE - it’s ridiculous that the same old ‘problem’ arguments keep resurfacing. It seems to me that the government should just state once and for all that listing does not prevent electrification, given all the existing precedents.
I think it's best to think of batteries as virtually free (in railway terms) given the cost envelope they are on. In 10 years they've went from $750/kWh to $150/kWh. I suspect they will reach $50/kWh in the next 10. "Full" electrification has probably seen an inverse trend the other way in terms of cost.
I think discontinuous electrification is the future, with increasingly large gaps being possible with time. The cost of rebuilding one bridge for electrification is probably going to be similar to adding batteries to an entire fleet of trains, and will be cheaper than DMUs to buy.
I think discontinuous electrification is the future, with increasingly large gaps being possible with time. The cost of rebuilding one bridge for electrification is probably going to be similar to adding batteries to an entire fleet of trains, and will be cheaper than DMUs to buy.
Class15
Established Member
Are any other countries using ‘discontinuous electrification’?
It is very telling that I haven’t heard of any.
It is very telling that I haven’t heard of any.
Perhaps telling that the only place I’m aware of is/was East Germany…
Nothing as technical as batteries involved - just coast across the gap, or in the case the then Berlin Hbf, coast in and wait for a diesel hunter to get you out again.
Most countries with a coherent railway policy had their trunk routes electrified by the 1970s.
Class15
Established Member
Exactly - but we should surely be continuing with full electrification well into the future?
Batteries feel like a get-out-of-jail card.
Technology has changed in recent times, but we should definitely be fully electrifying all the trunk routes. Bi modes and now batteries are a great solution for running extensions off the electrified network, but they shouldn't be an excuse for not electrifying properly. They can also offer benefits as a transitional solution as routes are electrified.
Batteries will be part of the solution in the future, but hopefully not for long term operations on main lines.
The reason it keeps coming up is it’s a convenient excuse for the government to pull out as an excuse, and for the failings to be blamed on when projects overrun for other reasons.
GraphitProjekt
Member
I think in Poland they have a sizable DMU fleet for little used rural lines. EU legislation is making it hard to procure new diesel trains, so Poland simply said - "okay we'll just electrify the branches". And these are minor rural lines with the inefficient 3kV DC system. The only place with a more backwards approach to railway electrification is the USA.
A get out of jail card is a good thing, surely…..
There are lots of masts west of the viaduct so they must have been reasonably confident of a solution