New Life For the “Green Weenie” Electric Locomotive

October 26th, 2013 by Tina Casey

Railway giant Norfolk Southern launched its ambitious all-electric NS 999 locomotive project in 2007, and since then it has been chugging steadily, if slowly, along. The pace has been picking up of late, though. At a recent trade conference, the company and its partner, Axion Power, documented improvements in the locomotive’s battery management system that leapfrogs the technology into the next generation.

Our sister site, Gas2.org, first began covering the NS 999 prototype when it rolled onto the tracks in 2009. Dubbed the “green weenie” by rail fans, the all-electric locomotive sported 1,080 12-volt lead-acid batteries. If that rings a bell, look under the hood of your car and you’ll see pretty much the same kind of battery.

Well, that was then, this is now.

NS 999 electric locomotive courtesy of Hampton Roads Partnership.

Next-Generation Batteries For An Electric Locomotive

There have been some promising tweaks to lead-acid batteries, but the difference occurred earlier this year, when NS 999 switched over to a new lead-carbon battery developed by Axion Power.

The positive electrode follows standard procedure for a conventional lead-acid battery, being composed of lead dioxide. The negative electrode, however, subs in a supercapacitor made of activated carbon for the sponge lead found in a conventional battery, hence the moniker PbC® battery.

Axion explains how the high surface area of its specially formulated activated carbon gets the job done:

In conventional lead acid batteries the concentration of acid changes from being very concentrated in the charged state to somewhat dilute in the discharged state as the acid is converted to water. In contrast, the PbC® battery stores H+ in the negative electrode in the fully charges state which move to the positive electrode during discharge where they are neutralized to form water. The result is reduced acid concentration swings from the charged to discharged state which reduces grid corrosion on the positive electrode and leads to longer life of the positive electrode.

At the 7th Annual ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Rail Transportation Conference in Pennsylvania earlier this month, Axion and Norfolk Southern provided an update on NS 999, comparing the new battery system to the earlier valve-regulated lead-acid battery system.

The report didn’t pull any punches, critiquing the previous iteration of NS 999 for its unwieldy battery management and battery packaging systems, which piled on maintenance costs.

The new PbC® batteries were tested on the Norfolk Southern Hybrid Locomotive Simulator, and the results look promising. According to the report:

PbC® batteries have a unique charging curve, known as “concave down, increasing,” which allows the batteries to self-equalize in strings. This characteristic of PbC® batteries provides for simpler battery management and reduced maintenance charging, while increasing the usable energy available to the string.

We Built This Zero Emission Locomotive!

Before Axion came on board, in its initial stages NS 999 was developed in partnership with Penn State University with an assist from Department of Energy funding (Norfolk Southern has also received $105 million in Recovery Act funding to improve the critical Crescent Corridor freight network, btw).

The Department of Energy also awarded Axion $150,000 last year, to help the company kickstart a commercialization plan for the PbC® battery.

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Tags: ASME, Axion Power, electric locomotive, green weenie, Norfolk Southern, PbC battery

About the Author

Tina Casey Tina Casey specializes in military and corporate sustainability, advanced technology, emerging materials, biofuels, and water and wastewater issues. Tina’s articles are reposted frequently on Reuters, Scientific American, and many other sites. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter @TinaMCasey and Google+.

NorthStands

ID NS is so “green” why did they tear down all the electric catenary in the old PRR territory and replace their electric locomotives with diesel? That was a crime!
JMin2020

Great Article Tina. Thanks for the post.
- jmrathbun
  
  I strongly suggest that people actually read Petersen’s work before writing him off. There’s a lot more to the NS program than discussed here, such as their improved long-haul locomotive development using Axion as a provider. He also mentions Axion’s ongoing work with BMW and two other major auto manufacturers, various green power providers, the communications industry, and the ePower conversions of heavy diesel trucks to a hybrid system using Axion. He makes no secret of his holdings of Axion stock nor his previous executive experience there, and he has just accepted an executive position at ePower. He argues that if any of these projects hits, AXPW will likely rise well above his cost of acquisition. I’m also a holder of AXPW, although not in as large quantity. I think those attacking Petersen should disclose their own relevant holdings.
  - Billion003
    
    I concur.
delbert3us

Why not address “Battery locomotives are not yet ready for long hauls” instead of “Peterson bashing”?
If the ePower trucks can handle long hauls, there is no reason trains using the same type of configuration can’t.
- RobS
  
  Because its a free country and I chose to comment on Mr Petersen, just as your free to comment on whatever you wish to. Why don’t you comment on battery locomotive’s suitability for long hauls if that’s what interests you?
  - Billion003
    
    You should consider reading the technicals and details of Peterson’s writings and reports over time.
RobS

Its a shame for Axion that their name is now so intertwined with John Petersen A man with such aggressive quasi-religious ant EV and particularly anti-Tesla viewpoints as well as a similarly almost theological opposition to solar and wind power. Don’t take my word for it, have a read of some of his articles and comments. http://seekingalpha.com/author/john-petersen
- http://electrobatics.wordpress.com/ arne-nl
  
  He has quite a large portion of his fortune tied up in Axion, and has seen it whither away to almost nothing. He lost more than 90% of his investment.
  
  What is the biggest threat to his lead-acid revival evangelism? Right, lithium-ion, cheap lithium-ion. Which company is pushing the development of cheap lithium-ion more than any other? Right. Tesla.
  
  He has been consistently trying to talk up his own stock and talk down the competition. I see him as a pump-and-dump scammer trying to save his pension.
  
  He once said that EV’s are only for the ‘philosophically committed and mathematically challenged’ and that he estimated there are 100,000 of those in the US. After selling an EV to each of those 100,000, the market would collapse and the EV disappear for good. Really, that is the level of absurdity that has become the norm in Petersen’s universe.
  
  Numerous people have tried to warn him that his blind hatred led him to dismiss the reality of the fast progress in EV technology and underestimate it’s potential. Reality is proving him wrong much quicker than he could have imagined and I could have hoped. But I don’t think that will serve as a reality check for Mr. Petersen. He is ‘economically committed and realism challenged’.
  - RobS
    
    “What is the biggest threat to his lead-acid revival evangelism? Right, lithium-ion, cheap lithium-ion. ”
    That’s the bizarre thing, PbC are high power density low energy density battereis perfect for short term high power demands like microhybrid cars for engine stop-start and switching locomotives, they are completely unsuitable for EV’s and even for hybrid vehicles. The only way for EV’s to be a threat to PbC are if we approach 100% EV penetration which even the greatest EV zealot would not expect for several decades. These are technologies that can easily coexist, yet Petersen has set himself on an Us vs them religious crusade against EV’s, alienating the very industry that could help promulgate Axion’s technology.
    - http://electrobatics.wordpress.com/ arne-nl
      
      “The only way for EV’s to be a threat to PbC are if we approach 100% EV penetration”
      
      Lithium-ion batteries come in many chemistries and variants. They can be attractive in stop-start applications if they come down in price. Do not forget the weight advantage of lithium-ion, which is probably not an issue in a locomotive. But car manufacturers are more and more focused on reducing weight, so a lithium battery might help.
      
      The price reduction in my view is mostly a matter of economies of scale and commoditisation. That is where the EV manufacturers come in. They push the development of cheap, reliable large format lithium batteries. All chemistries will take advantage of that progress, not just the high energy density variants used in EV’s.
      
      The way I see it is that lithium-ion will achieve the economies of scale and maturity to be the preferable choice in all automotive applications. But it is not there yet, and until that happens, there is narrow window of opportunity for Axion recoup their investments. That is why Petersen is so anxious: time is running out.
JamesWimberley

The NS 999 is a switcher locomotive – what used to be called a shunting engine. Battery locomotives are not yet ready for long hauls. Still, it’s progress. Stop-start is the most polluting use for diesel engines. You can of course also electrify the line with catenaries. The Trans-Siberian is electrified all the 6,100 miles from Moscow to Vladivostok, though the spur to Manchuria is not.
- RobS
  
  Switcher locomotives are also uniquely suited to electric motors, huge torque at very low speeds, low distances travelled per day, long down times between movements where electric engines only consume “fuel” whilst actually moving, the ability to recapture the energy of slowing the enormous amounts of mass they move around.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    Long down times means lots of opportunity to keep charged.
    
    Batteries for long distance trains are hard to imagine. Better we start stretching wires as Russia did to convert the Trans-Siberian from fuel to electric.
    
    “Along the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, trains of oil tank cars extend across the landscape for miles. Each tank car, black and tarry-looking, with its faded white markings, resembles the one that follows it… a trainload of these cars defines monotony.
    
    The Trans-Siberian Railway covers 9,288 kilometers between Moscow and the Pacific port of Vladivostok, or 5,771 miles. In other words, if it were twenty-one miles longer, it would be exactly twice as long as Interstate 80 from New Jersey to California. Laying awake near the tracks in some remote spot at night you hear trains going by all through the night with scarcely a pause.
    …
    
    (T)he Trans-Siberian Railway is all-electric, with overhead cables like a streetcar line – you find the tracks are empty of traffic only for five or ten minutes at a time.
    …
    
    Besides oil, the railway carries coal, machinery parts, giant tires, scrap iron, and endless containers … just like the containers stacked five stories high around the Port of Newark, New Jersey, and probably every other port in the world.”
    
    Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier (2010)
    - JamesWimberley
      
      Having travelled the Trans-Sib by myself from China, I recommend it provided:
      – you either speak survival Russian or go in a small group with a Russian guide
      – you don’t need constant novelty, and can enjoy the vastness of more or less identical taiga landscape for hour after hour
      – you break the trip, especially at marvellous Lake Baikal, but I also enjoyed Omsk, Tobolsk, and Kazan.
      One oddity is that all the train timetables are set to Moscow time, though the train crosses seven time zones.
      I made a few blog posts, recapped here: http://www.samefacts.com/2007/06/international-affairs/russia/princess-zeka-trans-sib-6/
    - http://pnrstatuses.in/ rajanikanth v
      
      that is just amazing