From battery chemistry to lifetime and charging speed, what’s best for European locomotives is still up for debate. Fully battery-powered trains are on the rise across Europe, but the battery chemistry and hardware that’s best for locomotives is still up for debate, writes Ben Ting, Chief Commercial Officer at Echion Technologies.
The prospect of a fully electrified railway network has long been an aspiration of the European rail community. There are clear benefits economically, environmentally and from a performance-based perspective. However, the percentage of electrified vs. non-electrified track varies significantly from country to country. Battery-powered trains have been proposed to address electrification gaps in networks, but until recently, their ability to complete journeys of over 100 miles ‘zero emission’ was rare.
This changed this year when, in the UK, Great Western Railway (GWR) completed a 200-mile journey with its modified Class 230 train on a single charge – without even using the full installed capacity – smashing the previous record of 139 miles and proving that battery powered trains can be a feasible solution for electrifying large sections of the European railway network.