Hydrogen Class 614 - It moves!

[Noddy]

No doubt there are people far more intelligent than me working on the project but

Anyway, back to the topic. The 614 is running again this week, and will be tackling the hill from Bo'ness up to the high bridge. An engineering possession rules out further progress at present. Again, this is a proof of concept trial, and people need to stop imagining repurposed 314s trundling around the network being the way forward.

As others have said why do we need a proof of concept?

The concept of hydrogen for transport also needs to be looked at in the wider sphere. For rural Scotland a plant in Inverness would supply rail and buses etc as well as an alternative for methane for heating.

Buses in northern Scotland will be battery. Homes will be air/ground sourced heat pumps, or modern Infrared panels for difficult properties.

There is a huge amount of available energy from wind in that area, which would suffer large losses being transmitted to England for example - the argument National Grid used for not buying power from Longannet, forcing its closure. Using it almost at source for hydrogen generation possibly offsets the transmission losses.

Electricity transmission losses are far far less than the inefficiencies of (green) hydrogen production and use.

I'm sure that the people who are looking at this from a commercial view have all the facts they need, but if they don't, then there are no end of forums to keep them right, maybe even suggesting which trains we'd like to see on what lines. I'm pretty sure that will not have occurred to them

Ballard, the company behind Arcola Energy who are doing the Class 614 trial, unveiled their first hydrogen bus way back in 1993. I am yet to see mass adoption in any context, and fuel cell vehicle projects only seem to go ahead where there is vast amounts of government support.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/business/12ballard.html

While I don't doubt their good intentions, unless there is a revolution in fuel cell technology, battery hybrids are the solution. I believe the money spent on this trial would have been far better spent on investigating how terrible train aerodynamics can be improved so battery range extended.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

As others have said why do we need a proof of concept?

We don't but the British Railway Industry has always sought to reinvent the wheel here and not just adopt what has been proven elsewhere. Its seems to coincide with nationalisation as prior to that the pre grouping and even there predecessors would see something going on another country and just decide to adopt with no proof of concept and arguably that was when some technologies were still esoteric.

While I don't doubt their good intentions, unless there is a revolution in fuel cell technology, battery hybrids are the solution. I believe the money spent on this trial would have been far better spent on investigating how terrible train aerodynamics can be improved so battery range extended.

Looses from the aero dynamic impact are minimal below 60mph as the dominant forces are rolling resistance which has massively improved from the use of roller bearings many decades ago.

 

[Energy]

Buses in northern Scotland will be battery. Homes will be air/ground sourced heat pumps, or modern Infrared panels for difficult properties.

Agreed, the hydrogen house up north was done by Cadent and Northern Gas Networks, wonder why they want to push hydrogen as the future...

Ballard, the company behind Arcola Energy who are doing the Class 614 trial, unveiled their first hydrogen bus way back in 1993. I am yet to see mass adoption in any context, and fuel cell vehicle projects only seem to go ahead where there is vast amounts of government support.

Hydrogen has been developing for decades, while progress has been made production of green hydrogen (biproducts wouldn't be enough apart from small scale use and carbon capture only delays the problem) is still inefficient. Its fairly clear (note Toyota going battery despite working on hydrogen for decades) that it isn't the future for all but a small minority of cases.

 

[Alanko]

The 614 is running again this week, and will be tackling the hill from Bo'ness up to the high bridge. An engineering possession rules out further progress at present. Again, this is a proof of concept trial, and people need to stop imagining repurposed 314s trundling around the network being the way forward.

Germany is a notoriously flat country after all, so I wager they never considered seeing if a hydrogen train could tackle a gradient of two.

Britain leading the way, yet again.

 

[haggishunter]

....

Again a bit of a trope. Why spend large amounts of money building inefficient electrolyzers when the money would be much better spent improving the network so as close to possible 100% of the generated energy could be used (or stored)?

Pumped Storage Hydro is the only at scale electricity storage option at present, there is a massive 'long duration' pumped hydro scheme in planning for Coire Glas above Loch Lochy to the North of the Great Glen, it will be able to generate at a peak flow of 1.5GW and maintain hundreds of megawatts of generation for days at a time.

However, there aren't many more options for that scale of pumped storage. So arguably hydrogen offers an alternative electricity storage medium, it's not as efficient as direct use, batteries or pumped hydro, but there are less limitations on scale. It won't be THE solution, but neither will a beefed up grid or more interconnector capacity be the sole answer, they will all be part of the mix, along with more small scale domestic level renewables, domestic batteries, V2G reversible EV charging tech, improving energy efficiency etc.

The Scotland <-> England Interconnector capacity is around 5.5GW and it is quite often saturated, with an electricity carbon intensity of 0g/kWh in Scotland. So it isn't just about grid capacity in the North of Scotland which has already been significantly uprated by the Beauly Denny upgrade.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Germany is a notoriously flat country after all,

Really?

 

[Razorblades]

Really?

Caution: Overhead Irony.

 

[Noddy]

Pumped Storage Hydro is the only at scale electricity storage option at present, there is a massive 'long duration' pumped hydro scheme in planning for Coire Glas above Loch Lochy to the North of the Great Glen, it will be able to generate at a peak flow of 1.5GW and maintain hundreds of megawatts of generation for days at a time.

However, there aren't many more options for that scale of pumped storage. So arguably hydrogen offers an alternative electricity storage medium, it's not as efficient as direct use, batteries or pumped hydro, but there are less limitations on scale. It won't be THE solution, but neither will a beefed up grid or more interconnector capacity be the sole answer, they will all be part of the mix, along with more small scale domestic level renewables, domestic batteries, V2G reversible EV charging tech, improving energy efficiency etc.

The Scotland <-> England Interconnector capacity is around 5.5GW and it is quite often saturated, with an electricity carbon intensity of 0g/kWh in Scotland. So it isn't just about grid capacity in the North of Scotland which has already been significantly uprated by the Beauly Denny upgrade.

In the next few years vehicle to grid will become a standard feature of cars, though requiring some infrastructure improvements (both consumer and grid) but relatively achievable. Certainly more so than building green hydrogen plants and the associated infrastructure. A million cars with an average battery size of 50KWh is 50 GWh. There are over 30 million cars in the UK, plus another 5 million or so commercial vehicles which will have much much larger batteries.

The future will definitely involve a mix of solutions. Hydrogen will at best be a very marginal one and having been brought up on the dream (con) of hydrogen I am extremely sceptical unless the technology vastly improves over the next few years. We also need to make sure we don’t get suckered into hydrogen in the belief it’s green when it’s currently clearly not, and shows little prospect of becoming so in the near future.

 

[Razorblades]

There are over 30 million cars in the UK, plus another 5 million or so commercial vehicles which will have much much larger batteries.

Given the cost of modal shift alone, does anyone seriously think that there will be anything like a one-for-one replacement of private vehicles? I can see a swathe of society being priced out of motoring full stop.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Pumped Storage Hydro is the only at scale electricity storage option at present, there is a massive 'long duration' pumped hydro scheme in planning for Coire Glas above Loch Lochy to the North of the Great Glen, it will be able to generate at a peak flow of 1.5GW and maintain hundreds of megawatts of generation for days at a time.

They need to get on and build Coire Glas as it will have 30GWh of storage capacity which is over three times Dinorwig at 9.1GWh. Of course the problem is we need something like 100 Coire Glas if we are to ever be able to support NG demand during a mid winter Northern high depression windless event and thats on todays demand levels not one where everything has been electrified. So we are going to need others forms of storage as well if we are to decarbonise electricity generation fully. My view remains that CCGTs will have to be used in these situations due to

The Scotland <-> England Interconnector capacity is around 5.5GW and it is quite often saturated, with an electricity carbon intensity of 0g/kWh in Scotland. So it isn't just about grid capacity in the North of Scotland which has already been significantly uprated by the Beauly Denny upgrade.

NG ESO states its 6.1GW but that includes the Western DC interconnector as well but all the way up to Inverness the onshore windfarm capacity outruns the transmission system capability

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/res...sion-network-requirements/scottish-boundaries

 

[Noddy]

Given the cost of modal shift alone, does anyone seriously think that there will be anything like a one-for-one replacement of private vehicles? I can see a swathe of society being priced out of motoring full stop.

It’s not going to happen over night in on the 1st January 2030 or 2035 if that’s what you’re worried about! But it’s reaching the tipping point now. Car manufacturers such as Ford are seriously getting in the game. The Fiesta cancellation announcement last week has come about because it will be replaced by an EV. Many (most?) fleet operators are going over to EVs already because of the tax breaks. Play the game of spot the white Tesla model 3. I have a company car and our company has already restricted renewals to EVs and plugin hybrids only (sadly I’m still on a petrol till next year). It won’t be long before it’s only EVs. These fleet EVs will trickle into the second hand market and personally I’d be far far more confident about buying an ex fleet EV than an ex fleet petrol or diesel.

There is a clear issue of the lack of small cheap EVs with a decent range. But if there’s money to be made the manufacturers will develop platforms that work.

Anyway sorry to go off topic. Back to the pointless 614…

 

[Energy]

The Fiesta cancellation announcement last week has come about because it will be replaced by an EV.

That isn't the only reason, chip shortages haven't helped and Ford shifted their focus to higher margin models. Cars like the Dacia Sandero have made it more difficult for Ford to compete as well.

These fleet EVs will trickle into the second hand market and personally I’d be far far more confident about buying an ex fleet EV than an ex fleet petrol or diesel.

Look at the VW e Golf on the used market.

Anyway sorry to go off topic. Back to the pointless 614…

Not completely off-topic, a lot of research and development into fuel cells and hydrogen will be from automotive, with hydrogen cars being dead I suspect we will see less investment into the hydrogen industry as a whole.

Back onto the 614 I'm still not sure why it exists, surely the data from in service in Germany is far more useful than an ancient EMU moving around a low speeds, its not like British and German hydrogen are different.

 

[Razorblades]

It’s not going to happen over night in on the 1st January 2030 or 2035 if that’s what you’re worried about!

LOL! It's not going to happen at all, for a substantial proportion of us.

 

[Noddy]

Not completely off-topic, a lot of research and development into fuel cells and hydrogen will be from automotive, with hydrogen cars being dead I suspect we will see less investment into the hydrogen industry as a whole.

Back onto the 614 I'm still not sure why it exists, surely the data from in service in Germany is far more useful than an ancient EMU moving around a low speeds, its not like British and German hydrogen are different.

Yeah the whole thing seems very strange. Presumably the data from the German trains is ‘commercially sensitive’ but even so. Unfortunately the Scottish and UK governments are being conned into this ‘hydrogen economy’ idea when there are much cheaper and cleaner alternatives out there. I just hope that not too much taxpayers money has been used on this project.

LOL! It's not going to happen at all, for a substantial proportion of us.

Haha, yes it will. People in Britain don’t use horses for mass transportation or agriculture anymore. That transition was far more complex.

From a rail perspective the thing I am concerned about in all this is that one of the environmental benefits of rail and especially rail freight-less CO2-will effectively be lost overnight. The Tesla Semi is likely to become available in the UK next year and assuming that it can broadly do what they say it does (500 mile range, a million miles for the motors, brakes that never need to get changed due to the regen motors, safer to drive) it could be even more popular here than the US. Which would you rather your freight hauled by-a 30 year old class 60 using 1980s engine tech chugging out CO2 and other toxic fumes or a Semi with zero tail pipe emissions?

 

[snowball]

'Will no longer be considered' | Hydrogen trains up to 80% more expensive than electric options, German state finds

Study commissioned by Baden-Württemberg concludes that line electrification or battery hybrid trains would be far cheaper over 30 years

www.hydrogeninsight.com

Discovered this earlier via @ANDREW_D_WEBB and the BBC. The article indicates it matches what happened in Saxony last year, and for anyone following the automotive industry over the last decade or two, the phrase ‘No s*** Sherlock’ springs to mind…

This is the same event reported in #86.

 

[Noddy]

This is the same event reported in #86.

Apologies! I somehow missed that the first time round!

 

[Jturner98]

Looks like the unit has finished:

Reading the comments it does say that one vehicle will be preserved which is good.

 

[prod_pep]

Reading the comments it does say that one vehicle will be preserved which is good.

Excellent news; really pleased to hear that. It didn't seem likely a 314 carriage would live on.

 

[D365]

I’m surprised at how small the hydrogen tanks are. By contrast, the hydrogen storage on a Class 799 fills up an entire driving trailer.

 

[43096]

I’m surprised at how small the hydrogen tanks are. By contrast, the hydrogen storage on a Class 799 fills up an entire driving trailer.

It depends what range you want on the train. If you're just testing the concept on a heritage railway, you don't need as much tank space as a mainline demonstrator.

 

[Razorblades]

I’m surprised at how small the hydrogen tanks are. By contrast, the hydrogen storage on a Class 799 fills up an entire driving trailer.

Likewise, having encountered the 319 conversion first-hand; although I guess the 314 was more for proof of concept rather than a train that could traverse the Trossachs!

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I’m surprised at how small the hydrogen tanks are. By contrast, the hydrogen storage on a Class 799 fills up an entire driving trailer.

The six tanks could store 40kg of Hydrogen or c1.3MWh of energy although that wouldn't be what was available for traction as you get losses through the fuel cell.
Good proof of concept here and seems bizarre it wasn't at least taken down to Melton for some duration testing as well as getting to grips with the operational issues for working with Hydrogen especially given the govt is putting a fair weight behind hydrogen.

 

[Alanko]

I’m surprised at how small the hydrogen tanks are. By contrast, the hydrogen storage on a Class 799 fills up an entire driving trailer.

It only had to get to the end of the headshunt and back at Bo'ness.

In all seriousness, surely the elephant in the room is that diesel is fairly irreplaceable on the most remote lines in Scotland? The emissions from sending a 158 up to Thurso a few times a day must be fairly negligible compared to the cement plant at Dunbar.

 

[BigB]

It only had to get to the end of the headshunt and back at Bo'ness.

In all seriousness, surely the elephant in the room is that diesel is fairly irreplaceable on the most remote lines in Scotland? The emissions from sending a 158 up to Thurso a few times a day must be fairly negligible compared to the cement plant at Dunbar.

It did actually go several miles up the hill to Birkhill, not just in the yard....
But that's all academic, it is being split up and will not run again. One car will be in the Museum of Scotlands Railways, with the other two being taken away in the coming months.
It answered some questions about using underfloor storage and generation which was the idea.

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

The emissions from sending a 158 up to Thurso a few times a day must be fairly negligible compared to the cement plant at Dunbar.

Cement is often overlooked. Maybe people just don't know that cement production is responsible for ~6% of global CO2.


Hydrogen is not a cost effective way of removing the last few percent of emisons from the rail network.

A modern bi-mode or tri-mode instead of a 158 is probably the best near term alternative. "Civity trains with all types of traction can be equipped with batteries."

There is a lot of room to improve on a 158, starting with the losses from the 2-speed Voith hydraulic transmission.

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DMU transmission upgrade cuts fuel consumption

VOITH has fitted a British class 158 DMU with two DiwaRail hydro-mechanical transmissions in a trial project with leasing company Angel Trains and operator Arriva Trains Wales.

www.railjournal.com

 

[Mag_seven]

A reminder that discussion in this thread should be confined to the Hydrogen Class 614 test train in Scotland.

If anyone wants to discuss anything else then please start a new thread elsewhere.

We have moved some speculative posts about Hydrogen as a power source for trains to this thread:

Is Hydrogen dead as a power source for trains?

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/hydrogen-class-614-it-moves.235865/ Hydrogen is dead in railways, a fad of the oil & gas industry. The far moved advanced in service trains in Germany have been withdrawn due to the painful operating costs & prohibitive costs of...

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