JR Central unveils 1st battery-powered bullet train

[bill937ca]

NAGOYA (Kyodo) -- Central Japan Railway Co. conducted a test run Wednesday for the press of its new shinkansen bullet train powered by batteries, a first among the world's high-speed trains.

 

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190710/p2g/00m/0bu/045000c?fbclid=IwAR0aFtmsR8NZu1x9AOSj2rXmcIxS3JURiSwyKy0OHC2UXd2N70fdmUJ9uh0

 

Video by 鉄道新聞. (From Oct 24, 2018)

 

 

Moving 16 cars by battery could be useful in the event of power failures or moving to the nearest station after typhoon or earthquake damage..

Edited July 10, 2019 by bill937ca

[cteno4]

Then just have everyone plug in their mobile devices and suck all the power out of them to get to another station. There should be quite a few kilowatt-hours stored in all those!

 

jeff

[katoftw]

I would assume when no overhead power is detected. That the power system would go into a reduced powering mode. Half lights on, ac disabled etc etc.

 

Curious what the travel range would be on battery only mode.

[cteno4]

Not going to be far and not fast.

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

I was thinking at a walking pace with engineers monitoring the progress. Obviously, only a last resort. Many trolleybuses are capable  of moving on battery power. 

[cteno4]

Problem here is a lot of inertia to get going requires a lot of energy even if moving slowly.

 

jeff

[Kiha66]

I wonder if perhaps only a few motors are being used while the whole train stores power.  This seems very useful at least to get the train to a safe point to evacuate, like out of a tunnel or off of a bridge.

[bill937ca]

And probably evacuate with staff on hand rather then emergency crews.

[railsquid]

Related article from the Youtube page:

http://tetsudo-shimbun.com/article/topic/entry-1529.html

 

Looks like they were carrying out a whole battery (hah) of different tests.

 

Some details about the battery operation in the section titled "バッテリー自走試験", including more photos.

 

Apparently the aim is to use space freed up by the reduction in size/weight of under-floor machinery for batteries. and to be able to run the train at max at 30km/h (which seems like a useful speed to be able to limp to the nearest potential passenger disembarkation point).
 

Edited July 11, 2019 by railsquid

[railsquid]

2 hours ago, bill937ca said:

I was thinking at a walking pace with engineers monitoring the progress. Obviously, only a last resort. Many trolleybuses are capable  of moving on battery power. 

 

I remember when living in Berlin, somewhere in the world there was an incident in which involved passgengers on an underground train being very inconvenienced by a power failure, and the local transit authority (BVG) was quick to point out their underground trains were equipped with batteries which should be enough to get to the next station. ("Citation needed" and I can't find any online reference at least with a quick search).

[bikkuri bahn]

One of my pet peeves- sloppy translating and embellished headlines.  The accurate headline would be "Shinkansen demonstrates moving under battery power" which is the first half of the original Japanese headline .  Oh well, par for the course.

Perhaps a more vital function of this battery backup is keeping the aircon running, as these trains quickly heat up inside, being sealed tubes.  

Original Mainichi article:

https://mainichi.jp/articles/20190710/k00/00m/020/241000c

[bill937ca]

Another Japanese language article, this one telling what was going on during the tests too.

 

https://news.mynavi.jp/article/20190711-n700s/

[cteno4]

9 hours ago, bikkuri bahn said:

Perhaps a more vital function of this battery backup is keeping the aircon running, as these trains quickly heat up inside, being sealed tubes.  

 

Good point!

 

jeff