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How Great Western Railway is pioneering
fast-charging batteries
Technologies for AC electrification and some forms of battery exist, but Great Western Railway (GWR) is leading the way on fast-charging battery technology. GWR MD Mark Hopwood explains why they’re taking this approach, and how they intend to get the best results.
Mark Hopwood CBE Managing Director at Great Western Railway
In this interview with Mark Hopwood CBE, he explains how Great Western Railway’s fast-charging battery project is helping to solve the electrification challenge in parts of the network where other electrification technologies are not suitable.
Most operators with trains incorporating batteries, such as in Europe and Japan, are train companies already using batteries for the brief final 25% of the journey on a main, electrified, line. This gives the batteries time to recharge. However, this approach can’t be used everywhere.
Neither AC electrification nor existing batteries are a commercially viable solution for local branch line routes where trains currently use diesel engines and we have no electric supply through overhead wires or a third rail.
Due to a quirk of history, GWR is the train operator with the highest number of branch lines in the UK, so we’re particularly aware of the challenge in decarbonising those routes and the need for a new technology to achieve that. Any technology will have its limits as well as its benefits, and we’re trying to overcome the limitations of mainstream traction batteries with fast-charging batteries.
Fast-charging batteries share the advantage of being low carbon and improving air quality with other forms of electrical traction like AC electrification or conventional batteries. Where they differ, and give additional value, is their ability to re-charge quickly during an existing timetabled turnaround period. Fast-charging batteries automatically start charging and might spend, for example, about 10 minutes out of every 60 minutes of charging.
This means they can be used on local routes at one or each end of the route without reducing the frequency of timetabled trains on branch lines. There’s no point trying to use a battery for branch line services if you have to wait for hours while it recharges at each end of the line. Maintaining the frequency of timetabled trains is essential for the service we provide to passengers as well as our own commercial viability.
However, our branch lines are clustered around London or the West Country, and are eminently suitable for this particular type of technology because there can be fast charging at each end of each branch line. So it looked like fast-charging batteries could solve an important problem for us and we got involved.
We worked with Vivarail in its early start-up days to test many of the underlying technological issues with fast-charging batteries. That was a vital learning phase for everyone. Although not part of the original plan, in January 2023 we bought many of the assets of Vivarail. As part of that we acquired the IP, and the lease of their Southam headquarters, which we then vacated in June, and we offered jobs to nine previous employees of Vivarail. The expertise for fast-charging batteries is now in-house at GWR, so it can be more effectively deployed to solve GWR’s needs. We are testing this technology precisely because we need a commercially viable solution to the decarbonisation issue on branch lines and no one else is providing one.
We’re testing the technology in stages so that we can be sure we iron out problems at each stage. There’s no point trying to run before we can walk.
We’re currently running tests at the new research centre at Long Marston, Warwickshire. We’ll be using this for continued testing and development throughout the project. Assuming that goes well, we plan to run a pilot in September 2023 using just one train.
The key question there will be testing the functionality of the fast-charging battery. Is it really able to perform as well on a real branch line as its test performance at Long Marston suggests? We hope so, but we won’t know until we test it out.
Building on the September 2023 pilot, there will be a test service of one train on the Greenford branch line. I’ve told the team their priorities are to get the Greenford branch line trial working, then to get the technology working on three other branch lines in the Thames Valley, and then to get the technology working in the West Country. Testing in service in phases in this way will mean a smoother integration of operational changes for us, and no reduction in reliability for our passengers.
We need to find ways to substantially improve the environmental credentials of rail in a low cost manner which are capable of practical application on the UK network in the near future. The solution developed by Vivarail offers us a solution to run battery trains on routes where the trains will not make regular journeys on route sections which are already electrified. However, it is tough to drive this type of project forward without support from a big manufacturer and I hope to see such involvement in due course.
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