Signalling Team Trials Hydrogen Power
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Railway Gazette.
These two paragraphs outline the project.
The use of hydrogen to provide power for staff welfare compounds and to recharge battery tools and electric vehicles has been tested by Colas Rail UK’s signalling team during a project in the Gloucester area.
H-Power Tower fuel cell stacks designed by AFC Energy to replace diesel generators at off-grid construction sites were used to provide power for Eco-Cabins supplied by Sunbelt Rental. The H-Towers were also used to recharge battery-operated equipment and electric-hybrid vehicles.
There has been a large saving in carbon emission during the work.
Whilst living in the Suffolk countryside for nearly forty years, we had three major power outages.
The first was the smallest and Eastern Electricity or whoever it was around 1980, needed to change the transformer that fed the village where we lived. So a diesel generator was plugged in and it fed the village, whilst the new transformer was connected.
Then in the Great Storm of 1987, where we were without power for fourteen days until a load of happy foreigners from the other side of Offa’s Dyke, got the system up and singing again. I think today, that waiting two weeks to be reconnected would be unacceptable. Although the problems in 1987, were more down to the considerable amount of damage in Suffolk.
The last time, the power went just as we were going to bed on a summer evening.
We woke to find that the power had been restored.
The manner of the restoration was a textbook case of how power outages can be solved.
- Our house and the farm buildings around it, were fed from a transformer up a pole in the hedge by the drive.
- A driver who had known what they were doing had backed a full-size articulated lorry into the field alongside the transformer.
- Inside the trailer was a diesel generator and this had been connected to the transformer.
- When I investigated early in the morning, an engineer appeared from inside the trailer and asked if everything was OK.
- I said it was and asked a few technical questions.
- It turned out, that someone had brought the overhead cables down, whilst moving a load of straw near the prison.
So as our house was on one end of the cable that connected a few villages and farms to the grid, by temporarily connecting their mobile generator to the transformer everybody could be reconnected until the damage done near the prison could be repaired.
How long will it be before emergencies like these are handled by generators powered by hydrogen rather than diesel?
In HS2 Smashes Carbon Target, I describe how High Speed Two are making use of hydrogen electricity generators.
In UK Consortium To Develop Mobile Hydrogen Refuelling For Construction Sites, I talked about a UK government project to develop the hydrogen refuelling technology for construction sites. This would also work for the refuelling of emergency generators.
I can envisage the development of a series of zero-carbon hydrogen-powered trucks with onboard hydrogen generators of different sizes.
Conclusion
Hydrogen will bring a revolution in how we provide power on construction sites, in emergencies and in remote areas.
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