photo: Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons/Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England
RAILTARGET follows a Turntide Technologies webinar on battery and hybrid rail, and whether batteries could replace diesel on the UK network, what goes into designing a rail battery, and the results of its trial with Hitachi Rail.
12:00 Lori Detoro, Senior Communications Manager at Turntide Technologies, opens the webinar and introduces Seth Yates, Head of Product for Battery Systems, and Bob Leland, Head of Rail Accounts.
Leland starts with the UK railway network. Around 60% of it remains non-electrified, while wiring every remaining route would require major investment. At the same time, he says, some already electrified parts of the network face power constraints at peak times.
The industry is also working towards the UK's decarbonisation goals, including the ambition to remove diesel-only trains from the network by 2040. For operators lower emissions have to come together with lower fuel use, manageable maintenance costs and reliable service.
12:05 Yates says batteries could be used on branch lines and rural routes where full electrification is difficult to justify, but also on trains that already spend part of their journey under overhead wires. A battery-equipped train could charge while running on an electrified section and continue on battery power when the wires end. This could also help around tunnels, viaducts, historic structures or other locations where installing overhead equipment is particularly complicated.
Another use is around stations and urban areas, where switching off diesel engines would reduce both noise and local emissions.
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12:10 Yates also points to the pressure on the electricity network. In future, trains could switch between overhead power and batteries depending on available capacity, potentially using geofencing or instructions sent directly to the train.
Turntide's approach is based on a modular battery system, allowing the amount of installed energy to be adjusted for a particular vehicle and route. In the company's work with Hitachi, the battery was fitted underneath the train in the space normally used by other traction equipment and connected to the existing power electronics.
12:15 Much of Yates' presentation focuses on how different rail battery applications can be. Before choosing cells or chemistry, engineers need to understand the route: how often the train accelerates, how long it runs each day, where it can recharge, what temperatures it will operate in and how much space and weight are available. An intercity train, commuter unit and tram can require very different battery systems.
The same applies to chemistry. Turntide works with technologies including LTO, LFP, NMC and NCA, but Yates says none offers the best result in every category. One may provide better energy density, another faster charging or a longer service life.
The company says it tests hundreds of cells under different loads, temperatures and charging patterns before choosing them for a project. According to Yates, Turntide has completed more than 200,000 hours of combined cell testing. That data is then used to estimate how quickly a battery will degrade in a particular service. If one route is significantly harder on the battery than another, operators could eventually move packs between trains to balance their use.
Long-term supply is another topic. A train may remain in service for 25 to 35 years, while its batteries will be replaced during that period. Turntide wants to avoid designing around a cell that may disappear from the market shortly afterwards.
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12:25 Yates also spends time on safety and cybersecurity. Rail batteries contain large amounts of stored energy and operate at high voltage, so the battery management system has to monitor the pack continuously. Thermal management is important because trains may operate in very different climates.
Cybersecurity has also become part of the specification. As rail is treated as critical infrastructure, Yates says protection has to cover not only the finished battery but also the software, manufacturing equipment, facilities and people involved in producing it.
Turntide is currently expanding its battery facility in Sunderland, where development of its rail systems originally began under the Hyperdrive Innovation name. According to Yates, demand is increasing for traction batteries as well as batteries used for auxiliary and onboard systems.
12:35 Leland presents Turntide's work with Hitachi Rail, which started around six years ago. They aimed to replace an existing diesel generator unit with a battery while keeping the train as close as possible to its original weight, dimensions and performance. The battery had to fit into the same space as the diesel equipment and work with the train's existing systems. It also had to deliver enough acceleration and range to avoid changes to the timetable.
According to Leland, the trial showed that acceleration on battery power matched the diesel unit, while onboard noise fell by around 6–9 dB. The train also achieved a range of approximately 125 km using a single battery system. Leland says the battery could have delivered stronger acceleration, but the trial deliberately aimed to reproduce the behaviour of the diesel train rather than change the way drivers operated it.
Asked later about the experience onboard, he says the trial was conducted outside normal passenger service, although industry representatives and other guests travelled on the train. The switch between diesel and battery was barely noticeable apart from the reduction in noise.
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12:40 The speakers make clear that a battery does not necessarily have to replace every diesel engine on a train. An operator could remove one generator and install one battery, or use a combination of batteries, diesel and overhead electricity depending on the route.
This is relevant for longer journeys. Yates says today's battery technology is not ready to operate every 500-km route entirely on stored energy, but where a train already runs under wires for part of its journey, the battery only needs enough capacity for the unelectrified gaps.
Leland presents Turntide figures showing a 25% reduction in fuel consumption and 24% reduction in CO2 emissions for a battery-hybrid tri-mode train compared with a diesel bi-mode configuration. For a battery EMU, Turntide estimates a 100% reduction in diesel fuel consumption and a 63% reduction in emissions, with the remaining emissions coming from electricity generation.
He also says the company designs its rail batteries for a service life of more than ten years, although the final figure depends on the duty cycle.
Yates then says that the battery technology being developed today is already different from that used in the first Hitachi project. Turntide's second-generation rail battery uses LFP chemistry. According to Yates, LFP did not have the required performance for this application when the programme began several years ago, but improvements in the technology have since made it a viable option. At the same time, he warns against adopting every new chemistry as soon as it is announced.
12:50 During the Q&A, he is asked about solid-state batteries and other emerging technologies. Turntide follows them, he says, but rail requires proven cells that can be manufactured in volume, supplied for years and shown to be safe before they are put into passenger service. The company is also using advanced algorithms in its battery management systems to monitor state of charge, state of health and degradation.
Asked whether more battery trains are likely to appear in Britain over the next few years, Leland says yes. He points to Hitachi's Grand Central tri-mode order, which he says will use Turntide batteries, while adding that the company is working on other projects that remain covered by confidentiality agreements.
The webinar ends with the topic of practical challenges still facing battery rail: the size and weight of traction batteries, managing thousands of cells within one system, high-voltage assembly, securing a long-term cell supply and convincing operators that the technology is safe and reliable. Turntide says it is also planning for what happens at the end of a battery's life, including traceability of materials and recycling, with the aim of recovering more than 90% of the material where possible.
This concludes the Turntide Technologies webinar on battery and hybrid rail. Thank you for tuning in with RAILTARGET for the updates.