Wabtec’s GECX 6000 battery-powered locomotive shown in a consist for testing near the company’s Erie, Pa., shops.
Stephan M. Koenig
ERIE, Pa. — On Tuesday morning, the much anticipated battery powered locomotive from Wabtec made its first trial run on the test track near Erie. The locomotive is the first unit to rely mainly on batteries for propulsion and the first such unit to enter domestic mainline service. Identified as GECX 6000, it is built to BNSF Railway specifications including the C4 truck. Once testing is complete in the next few months, observers expect it will wear Wabtec demonstrator colors.
@Scott Giles: It depends on how the loco is programmed. It can be setup as a starter motor to help get the consist going and reduce load on the diesels until it reaches speed (and then regenerate). It can be used as an “all out” engine and do a full battery drain start and then turn it over to the diesel set for primary motion. It can also be programmed for regenerative braking or slack control on long downgrades.
Full recharge time at the engine facility will depend on the voltage of the service bay, how the batteries are setup, and how full they are when the engine arrives has a huge bearing on recovery time.
What I would like to see is if 4 or 5 of these in a full lash up and find out if they can be placed in series or in regenerative combinations of some kind using computers and gps. If the railroad has already mapped the line then the engine will already know what to expect, when to expect it, and how much energy it will need to extract to get over some grade or distance. The variable will be tonnage it is pulling and the computer can measure the amount of torque required at the coupling.
So when the grade is flat the computer has 2 engines “on line” maintaining speed while the others are regenerating and maintaining slack. If there are gaps where the modeling says there isnt enough kWh to support the load, either put up a 1 mile cantenary or place 1 diesel in the consist to provide passage through the gap.
The world of EV’s is just beginning to open up and the battery technology is accelerating the software managing it. It has been interesting to see how researchers have been managing the battery demand curve.
If people who are anti-carbon think this is a savior, should rethink that position. Those batteries require a lot of cobalt, and that requires a large amount of destructive mining.
What is the range the battery provides? There was an earlier report that it could provide a full 4400HP for only 45 min., but I suspect that was a heat limit for the battery pack and not a true range limit.
My question on it is a bit more basic. How quickly will it be able to recharge?
There are literally years of differences between the Wabtec engine and the NS experiment. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Daniel
Yes, Norfolk Southern did have a battery powered locomotive that was re constructed from a former Penn Central GP38-2. The unit then became NS BP4 999 it was just recently sold to BUGX a DieselMotive company based in Northern California. But it wasn’t really successful from what I understand.
As for GE/Wabtec’s new battery powered locomotive (seen here in primer) I think that it will be interesting to see how well this engine performs in the near future.
Didn’t NS just auction off one of these?