The new locomotive, nicknamed "The Green Goat," is designed to help reduce air emissions in cooperation with federal, state and local environmental agencies. The locomotive will be used in light switching service in the Fresno yard area. The Green Goat is powered by large banks of storage batteries. When the locomotive is not running, a small low-emissions diesel engine on board recharges the batteries. UP officials expect the hybrid will cut air emissions by 80 to 90 percent and reduce diesel fuel use by 50 to 80 percent compared to a conventional diesel-powered switching locomotive. Hybrid trains Looks like it works kinda opposite.
developed right here in Vancouver. Saw one working in their yard on Thursday. They actually have two models the Green Goat and the Mini Goat. I did a post here on PC last year about them with links to the company. They move their production to the US I think Pennsylvania last fall to be nearer to the source of rolling stock. here's the company url http://www.railpower.com/
I bet we see a lot of them used for commuter rail applications. Not just for the fuel savings but also the emissions.
By "opposite" I mean it sounded like they used teh diesel at low speeds and to charge the battery, implying the electric was used at high speeds to keep the train going. That's sorta the opposite of the Prius, which uses the electrical engine at low speeds and the ICE at high speeds. Both use the engine to recharge. Here we have a diesel-hybrid and I can't help but wonder how many other things that use an ICE can be converted to hybrid. I think the Navy is already looking into ships. I'm not so sure I'd trust a hybrid plane, just in case of that accidental stall.
All modern diesel locomotives are series hybrids. They can only move via electric traction motors. The diesel engine are only used to generate electricity. It sounds like the Green Goat gains efficiency by using a much smaller diesel engine, but having it do useful work during the 70% idle time to charge the battery bank. I read that conventional locomotives mostly use electrical braking. That is, they place a load across the motors and use them as generators to slow down.
GE's Locomotive Division based here in Erie has announced plans to build actual hybrid diesel locomotives. They claim that the batteries will be able to power a standard train for 150 miles on their own. I was curious as to what type of battery they will use and I found out that it will be a sodium-based battery that has to be maintained at 300 degrees f. to operate. Production is to start in 2 years. Railpower has been buildng hydrid switching engines for some time in Canada, and now has an engineering office here. I can only hope that their business grows rapidly and a manufacturing facility is started here. Much of our area's industrial base is declining or gone and this would be most welcome here.
