On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 18:55:09 +0000 (UTC), "Terry Harper"
wrote:

"David Hansen" wrote in message
.. .

Trains consume large amounts of electricity. I hate to think what
size the battery bank would be to run a railway on UPS. There would
not be a standby generator, but a standby power station. Think in
terms of the size of some of the old ones.

You perhaps missed the report recently about the commissioning of a UPS to
serve the town of Fairbanks, Alaska. Apparently it is the biggest NiCad
battery array in the world. They don't have a grid connection outside Alaska
apparently.


There are some details of this at

http://www.gvea.com/projects/bess.php .

Produces 27 (eventually, 40) megawatts for 15 minutes; I haven't been
able to find the specifications for how long it takes to get going,
but I suppose it could be a true UPS. Cost is quoted as $35 million,
and the batteries alone cost $10 million.The battery life is quoted as
10 to 20 years.

Any useful equivalent for the LU would have to be at least ten times
larger!

Yes, it would be a big gas turbine. Would a few hundred MW be adequate, do
you think?

Trains take around a megawatt at full thunder, don't they? And there
are around 500?

Perhaps it might be interesting to think about installing much smaller
UPSs or other generating capacity at each station. Centralised power
generation isn't always the best way. (and no, I don't think going
back to coal-powered trains would be a good idea)

R