Vivarail chosen for fast charging trial on the Greenford branch

[whole diary]

[Celestial]

Great Western Railway has signed a deal with manufacturer Vivarail to trial new battery-charging technology on its network, paving the way for battery-only trains to run in regular passenger service in the future.

The trial, supported by Network Rail, will take place on the Greenford branch line later this year and test Vivarail’s trackside fast-charging equipment in an operational setting for the first time.

It is hoped that the project will demonstrate that the equipment works safely and reliably in a ‘real-world’ environment.

The use of batteries for extended operation has typically been constrained by their range and meant widespread implementation has, until now, not been feasible.

Fast Charge equipment will be installed at West Ealing Station later this year and tested with Vivarail’s battery-only Class 230 train, first showcased at COP26 last year.

The train has a range of up to 62 miles on battery power, recharging in only 10 minutes using the Fast Charge system in off-network tests.

https://news.gwr.com/news/gwr-fast-charging-trial-brings-regular-battery-only-rail-services-a-step-closer

Let's hope it's successful. It would seem appropriate technology for, say, some of the West Country branches.

[IndustryInsider]

Yes, and a good choice of route to trial it on.  Might release another Turbo or two to go west. 

[broadgage]

Charging in ten minutes is impressive, a battery range of only 62 miles less so but still useful.

Does anyone know how this charging energy is to be supplied ? Short length of OHLE ? Conductor rail ?

I would hope that something simple and reliable has been selected. It would n my view be preferable to also allow charging from a standard mains supply via a flexible lead. Not very practical for ten minute layovers, but handy if the train is ever required to visit some place not equipped with anything more sophisticated.

A 32 amp 3 phase supply would probably fully charge it overnight, and even a domestic type 13 amp supply would charge it in a few days.

[IndustryInsider]

Does anyone know how this charging energy is to be supplied ? Short length of OHLE ? Conductor rail ?

Details here:

https://vivarail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Vivarail-Solar-Power-RCM-Web.pdf

[Celestial]

A 32 amp 3 phase supply would probably fully charge it overnight, and even a domestic type 13 amp supply would charge it in a few days.

Even better, use a four way extension lead and you could charge a small fleet all at the same time. Simples.

[stuving]

Does anyone know how this charging energy is to be supplied ? Short length of OHLE ? Conductor rail ?

If you look on Vivarail's website, there isn't anything very technical but there is a video about the trains and their "fast charge" system. That shows the progress since the note in the link above (dated December 2020).

Basically, there's a buffer store of batteries at the station housed in shipping containers, that only needs a low power mains supply. Connection is via short "ramps" of third and fourth rail that the train has to stop exactly over to get a high-current feed. Whether it can do all of this at DC^▸ (Direct Current) isn't clear, nor is what kind of batteries they use (though didn't we have something on that earlier?).

[Electric train]

Does anyone know how this charging energy is to be supplied ? Short length of OHLE ? Conductor rail ?

If you look on Vivarail's website, there isn't anything very technical but there is a video about the trains and their "fast charge" system. That shows the progress since the note in the link above (dated December 2020).

Basically, there's a buffer store of batteries at the station housed in shipping containers, that only needs a low power mains supply. Connection is via short "ramps" of third and fourth rail that the train has to stop exactly over to get a high-current feed. Whether it can do all of this at DC^▸ (Direct Current) isn't clear, nor is what kind of batteries they use (though didn't we have something on that earlier?).

I would suspect it will be at DC, most fast chargers are DC and match the battery voltage.  DC also saves the weight of having chargers on board.

The development of the rules of how these trains charge on the operational network has been in discussions involving NR^» (Network Rail - home page), ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about), RSSB^▸ (Rail Safety and Standards Board) and Vivarail for quite a number of years

[grahame]

My understanding is that a battery storage bank allows a reservoir of power to be built up off solar power, or perhaps off a limited mains supply, over a period of time for a short, sharp local charge.  Bit like a reservoir, but for power not water?

Could this technology also be applied (indeed, is it already applied?) to electric charging for road vehicles - could (for example) a couple of buses running a town service be fast-charged during the driver's personal needs break, even if the grid to the place that break is taken is pretty pathetic?

[Timmer]

I have read that fast charging is not good for the life of a battery. Not going to be very environmentally friendly if you are having to swap batteries out every few years because they are knackered from the over use of fast charging. This applies to electric cars too of course.

[Bmblbzzz]

Does anyone know how this charging energy is to be supplied ? Short length of OHLE ? Conductor rail ?

Details here:

https://vivarail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Vivarail-Solar-Power-RCM-Web.pdf

In Cancun the sun shines for an average
of 9 hours a day for 240 days per year*

Is that Cancun in Mexico, or Cancun the lesser known borough of West London? 

[grahame]

Details here:

https://vivarail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Vivarail-Solar-Power-RCM-Web.pdf

In Cancun the sun shines for an average
of 9 hours a day for 240 days per year*

Is that Cancun in Mexico, or Cancun the lesser known borough of West London? 

That's 2160 hours

From:  https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/england/london

In London, there are 1,675 sunshine hours per year. The sun is rarely seen from November to February, while from May to August, it shines for an acceptable number of hours, and in any case, it shines a bit more often than in the rest of Britain (excluding the southern coast).

So great for an intensive summer service of trains from the London suburb of Ealing to holiday and day trip destinations such as Castle Bar Park and Green Ford

Seriously - excellent line for the trial, me thinks.

[stuving]

My understanding is that a battery storage bank allows a reservoir of power to be built up off solar power, or perhaps off a limited mains supply, over a period of time for a short, sharp local charge.  Bit like a reservoir, but for power not water?

Could this technology also be applied (indeed, is it already applied?) to electric charging for road vehicles - could (for example) a couple of buses running a town service be fast-charged during the driver's personal needs break, even if the grid to the place that break is taken is pretty pathetic?

Yes - quite a few systems, notably trams (e.g. Nice) and local trains (e.g. using Furrer + Frey's Railbaar contact system). But it's hard to know if these are really fast, or just fast enough. From what I've seen, most traction batteries are still Li-ion, so they can't cope with very high charge rates. And you don't need the onshore buffer battery if you have a big enough supply.

Vivarail's previous announced work in this field, and the trains they have built, use batteries from Valence. There was a FOAK project unhelpfully called TRAIN on the same contact system being used at West Ealing. The buffer is described as using 'retired' batteries, presumably from cars, so it must rely on having a lot of them to reach the peak power needed (but then they are cheap).

I have seen reports of trails using other batteries, and the BPEMU used lithium iron magnesium phosphate ones from Valence and they were acquired by Vivarail afterwards. While there was a lot of technical detail from Vivarail around 2018, I can't see that on their site now. So what batteries they will be using for the Greenford trains is a bit of a mystery (I think Valence now call themselves Lithion, which may be a hint). And of course that's the main thing determining the peak charge rate and what that means for battery life.

[broadgage]

Not certain that the intention is to charge the lineside battery from solar ? The publicity material seems to imply that this is an option.
In an urban area of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) with substantial grid supplies, I am not convinced that the lineside battery is justified. This battery adds costs, complication, extra losses, and another point of failure.

Loads of up to about 1 MW can be supplied direct from the 11kv DNO^▸ (Distribution Network Operator) network, if more than that is needed than a higher voltage supply is needed. This costs money, but is probably cheaper than the lineside battery.

[paul7575]

[…] While there was a lot of technical detail from Vivarail around 2018, I can't see that on their site now. So what batteries they will be using for the Greenford trains is a bit of a mystery (I think Valence now call themselves Lithion, which may be a hint). And of course that's the main thing determining the peak charge rate and what that means for battery life.

Regarding battery manufacturer, there’s an IMechE presentation about the trains that includes pictures of battery packs from the manufacturer “Hoppecke” about 35mins in:
https://youtu.be/5eNGAfm0Dl4
I couldn’t make out what he was saying originally…

[stuving]

[…] While there was a lot of technical detail from Vivarail around 2018, I can't see that on their site now. So what batteries they will be using for the Greenford trains is a bit of a mystery (I think Valence now call themselves Lithion, which may be a hint). And of course that's the main thing determining the peak charge rate and what that means for battery life.

Regarding battery manufacturer, there’s an IMechE presentation about the trains that includes pictures of battery packs from the manufacturer “Hoppecke” about 35mins in:
https://youtu.be/5eNGAfm0Dl4
I couldn’t make out what he was saying originally…

I do recall coming across the name Hoppecke in the context of a switch of battery supplier - I even thought I'd put it in a post, but if I did I spelled it wrong. The fast charging work did start with Valence, so the switch took place mid-stream. Hoppecke's announcement of their new friends says these are Li-ion batteries, rather than the old LiMP ones.

From the answer to a question in that IMechE talk, the main factor in how well Li-ion batteries cope with fast charging is the balancing the charge state of all the cells. This capability is built into the Hoppecke ones, but if it's not you can't really add it on afterwards. For small batteries, every Li-ion cell has to have a charge controller chip. For bigger ones, with strings of series cells, maybe they are not usually provided per cell?