how much electricity does it take to move a train?

[miyakoji]

Overly general question, I know.  Two news articles on Tetsudou Fan's newsfeed got me thinking:

 

http://railf.jp/news/2012/05/16/185800.html

http://railf.jp/news/2012/05/17/105900.html

 

In the first one, JR West moved two 113 series sets from Miyahara Depot (at Shin-Osaka) to Fukuchiyama, back to Miyahara, and it's thought they'll go to Shimonoseki next.  In the second one, JR East did a typical test run of the 651 series on the Kawagoe Line.  The day before, they had run it on the Tohoku Main Line, and since have done test runs on the Takasaki, Agatsuma, and Joetsu Lines.  I wonder how much these non-revenue runs cost the railway.  How much fuel would this use if they were DMUs?

[bill937ca]

It was probably started by this Japan Times letter to the editor.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/rc20120517a2.html

 

I read today that shortages of 20% to 30% may result.  The Cool Biz dress code has been implemented as of May 1st again this year.

 

http://japandailypress.com/an-explanation-of-cool-biz-and-its-return-301500

 

People are getting ornery over power use and especially power waste or perceived power waste. But does JR have the ability to turn those lights off?  They can`t use that much power compared to propulsion and air conditioning.  And remember, all diesel fuel has to be imported.

 

TEPCO is asking for a 10% price increase because thermal power costs more than nuclear power.  Tokyo's TOEI wants its bus drivers to take a pay cut because TEPCO cancelled its dividend and TOEI's bus operations failed to produce a profit in fiscal 2011. (Actually those buses lose money, but the TEPCO dividend hid that fact).  Fun, eh?   :icon_silent:

[miyakoji]

Actually I hadn't seen those articles, I've just wondered for a while how much electricity trains use, expressed in money, equivalent amount of diesel fuel, or X 100 watt lightbulbs for Y hours, etc.

 

It is an interesting article, though, particularly the note about Toei's bus services.  I thought overall those would be at least break-even.

 

When it was announced last year that the Kanto-area operators were going to be turning out station lights and such, I thought the same thing exactly that it must be nothing compared to the traction supply.  Although, I think JRE has one or two of its own generation plants.

[bill937ca]

Here`s the Tepco/Toei article.

 

Tepco halts dividends, so metro buses to run red ink

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20120517a1.html

[bill937ca]

As for how much power this article mentions ``the average energy of 84 kcal. required per passenger kilometer in 1994.`` I think K is kilowatt. Not sure what cal is.

 

Another quote:

 

Furthermore, one Series 209 EMU saves as much electricity as used by 800 households—replacing all 10,000 JR East trains with the Series 209 would save the same amount of power as consumed by an entire city of 1 million households. It is often argued that environment protection measures demand big spending, but the Series 209 EMU costs just one half of the conventional cost and can easily justify its adoption. It is a good example of technology overcoming the apparent contradictions of ecology and economy. Since JR East spends about ¥50 billion annually on electric power, a 10% power reduction would save ¥5 billion.

[bikkuri bahn]

kcal is kilocalories, a measure of energy.  A kilocalorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one liter of water one degree centigrade at sea level.

[cteno4]

Kcal is kilo calories and is an measure of energy like a joule. It can be equated to an equivalent of watt*time

 

I found the jr east on the wiki at .35 Mjoule / passenger km that would relate to about 100 watt hr. So running a 100 watt bulb for an hour is the amount it takes to take one passenger 1 km on average

 

so that headlight being on for 24 hrswould probably waste maybe equal taking one passenger 100 km or a small fraction of the energy with a single person on the train. Ac is a much larger energy gulper.

 

It's about 20 Mjoule per train car per km. so that's about 5kw hr per train car per km. so a 16 car train would be about 80 kw hr per train per km of travel

 

Jeff