By Charles Murray – Utility companies have long known how to capture the braking energy from electric trains, but they’ve usually found it difficult to get any large-scale benefits from such projects — until now.
The Recycled Energy and Optimization project takes a different approach. Using a dc/dc converter from Envitech Energy, it senses when track voltage is too high (about 800V). It then sucks DC power out of the third rail and pushes it into a giant lithium-ion battery pack provided by Saft, until it’s needed. “When the third rail’s voltage drops too low, they can bring the power out of the battery and then put it back in the third rail,” McDowall said. more> http://tinyurl.com/covod2n
Related articles
- Smarter Transportation by IBM, StrategyGroup
- Green Blog: Cutting the Electric Bill with a Giant Battery (green.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Viridity Captures Train Braking Power, Sells it to the Grid (greentechmedia.com)
