Aurizon: battery-electric heavy haul loco prototype

[ozbob]

Our local community will be home to Australia's very first zero-emissions freight loco at Redbank! The Aurizon diesel...

Posted by Lance McCallum MP on Tuesday, 30 May 2023

[ozbob]

https://www.aurizon.com.au/news/2023/work-starts-on-first-zero-emissions-capable-freight-locomotive-built-in-australia

Work starts on first zero-emissions capable freight locomotive built in Australia

Australia's largest rail freight company, Aurizon, today announced details of its investment to build the first zero-emissions capable freight locomotive constructed in Australia

Aurizon has contracted Progress Rail, a Caterpillar company and global leader in rail technology solutions, to undertake the innovative project. This type of work has the potential to reduce Australia's transport emissions and transform the nation's freight supply chains.

This will be the first freight unit to be constructed in Australia powered by batteries, allowing the potential future use of totally renewable energy sources for freight hauls.[1] Batteries will also capture re-generative energy created when trains brake or travel downhill.

The prototype is being built at Progress Rail's Redbank facility in south-east Queensland. The unit will be designed as a heavy-haul freight locomotive, capable of working at locations across Aurizon's national footprint and suitable for Australia's harsh operating conditions.

Progress Rail will retrofit one of Aurizon's existing 4000-class diesel locomotives. Aurizon has more than 120 of the 4000-class locos in its national fleet, meaning a successful battery conversion could provide a much faster, less expensive decarbonisation pathway, using fully recycled assets.

Aurizon Managing Director & CEO Andrew Harding said the project sits at the heart of Aurizon's decarbonisation initiatives with a target of achieving net-zero operational emissions by 2050.

"Modern freight locomotives using renewable energy sources have the potential to transform the nation's freight supply chains for customers, communities and the Australian economy," Mr. Harding said.

"Not only will this dramatically reduce the carbon footprint for our freight transport needs and the community in general, but it will also provide a significant competitive advantage for Australian industries and exporters in global markets.

"Australia is ideally positioned to supply the world with great reserves of future-facing commodities that will fuel and feed a decarbonising world for decades to come. This includes commodities such as copper, nickel, rare earths, grain and phosphate.

"Delivering high-quality Australian products for export across zero or low-carbon supply chains will be a win- win for Australian companies and Australian communities," Mr Harding said.

"We are excited to support Aurizon in achieving their carbon reduction goals," commented Colin Kerelchuk, Senior Vice President at Progress Rail.

"This project leverages our worldwide capabilities, while heavily relying on our expert workforce in Australia. We will deliver this EMD® Joule out of our Redbank, Queensland facility, where we have recently secured a long-term lease extension to continue operations through 2034.

"With a presence in Queensland since 2015, we are well positioned to deliver broad technology and fleetwide modernizations to improve our customers' operational and emissions efficiencies," Mr Kerelchuk said.

Aurizon has also commissioned leading Australian universities (the University of Queensland and Central Queensland University) to undertake sophisticated modelling work and research on emerging battery technology, network infrastructure and charging facilities required to provide renewable electricity to the locomotive batteries.

Locomotives typically have an asset life of 20-30 years, so replacing the diesel engine with batteries and recycling the remainder of the locomotive is less expensive, more environmentally sound and based on circular economy principles.

The design phase and preliminary work on the retrofit has commenced at Redbank. Construction of the locomotive is expected to be complete by early 2025, with on-track trials commencing in the first half of 2025. The charging infrastructure on the selected Australian rail corridor will be completed concurrently.

Fact sheet

[ozbob]

Aurizon's Battery Electric Locomotive Project

[Ari 🚋]

Aurizon's Battery Electric Locomotive Project

Considering the environmental impact and relative limitations of current battery tech, I can't help but imagine for most cases a regular overhead power system would be more efficient. It will be interesting to see where this goes though

[ozbob]

The first Australian-built battery operated train could soon be up and running in Central Queensland. Aurizon is...

Posted by 7NEWS Central Queensland on Friday, 7 July 2023

[minbrisbane]

Central Queensland has an almost fully electrified coal network - why do we need a battery electric locomotive?

[SurfRail]

^ It isn't fully electrified.  Some bits probably never will be.

[ozbob]

https://x.com/7NewsCairns/status/1766025312054423949?s=20

[ozbob]

Aurizon secures funding to develop next-generation freight trains using renewable energy

Australia's largest rail freight company Aurizon, today received a major boost to its program to develop the next generation of Australian freight trains, aiming to replace diesel fuel with renewable energy sources on its locomotive fleet.

Aurizon has secured a $9.4 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to develop, test and trial a battery electric tender (BET) to be used in conjunction with a modified locomotive. (refer graphic below).

The tender – essentially a big battery-pack on wheels – will couple with the modified locomotive to operate as a hybrid unit using both diesel and battery-electric power sources. The tender's battery will also harness re-generative energy captured as the train travels down grades and brakes as part of normal operation.

The ARENA grant represents half of the required funding for the 'Battery Powered Tender for Heavy Haul Fleet Decarbonisation' project, with the balance of the investment to be funded by Aurizon. The battery-electric tender and modified locomotive project will be built by Aurizon and technology project partner, Alta Battery Technology (Alta) at a facility in Australia, with design and technology inputs from Alta.

Aurizon appreciates the Federal Government making funding available to support the development of a range of new zero emissions technologies in the transport sector, including technologies that can be developed for application in rail-based freight supply chains that are integral to Australia's export and domestic industries that rely on transport services.

The battery-electric tender is the second key initiative in Aurizon's three-pronged strategy (refer graphic below) to deliver zero-emissions capable freight locomotives for its national portfolio of customers:

In May 2023, Aurizon started work on the first battery-electric locomotive (BEL) to be constructed in Australia. The prototype is expected to commence on-track trials in late 2025. This technology is expected to deliver freight on hauls of up to 400 kilometres.

The battery-electric tender, in the future, when coupled with the battery-electric locomotive, aims to extend the future range for freight hauls up to 850 kilometres. Trials are expected to commence in early 2026.

In 2021 Aurizon and Anglo American agreed to work together on a feasibility study to assess the introduction of hydrogen-powered trains for bulk freight. This work concluded that a Hydrogen Electric Tender was the preferred configuration to pursue given the lack of space on the locomotive to store the required amount of hydrogen fuel.  Aurizon continue to work with First Mode to explore this concept that when coupled to a battery-electric locomotive, aims to cater for freight hauls greater than 850 kilometres.

Aurizon aims to use battery and hydrogen power sources, or a combination of both, to deliver decarbonised freight solutions for customers across our national footprint, no matter how heavy or how far the freight needs to move," said Andrew Harding Aurizon's Managing Director & CEO.

"We know that Aurizon will need different solutions for different hauls and customers. We are committed to making a transition towards net zero operational emissions based on a locomotive fleet that uses zero emissions technologies, is flexible and suited to the challenging Australian conditions in which we operate.

"By delivering a locomotive fleet that can tap into renewable energy sources, Aurizon and the rail industry can do the heavy-lifting in decarbonising transport supply chains in Australia. We are also working to increase the proportion of freight transported by rail rather than road, which would contribute to reducing overall transport sector emissions.

This is not only good for our customers and the economy, it will also deliver environmental and safety benefits for the broader community."

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the project is addressing an emissions challenge in one of Australia's largest industries.

"Aurizon's battery electric tender is a world first that hopes to pave the way for the rail freight industry and help the resources on its decarbonisation journey."

"The resources industry is a pillar of the Australian economy, but also accounts for a significant share of emissions," Mr Miller said.

Alta's Managing Director Roy Zou says the collaboration with Aurizon aligns seamlessly with Alta's mission to power the nation's transition to a cleaner future.

"We are delighted to be the technology partner on this project, providing innovative solutions that will shape the future of the rail freight industry in Australia and beyond.

"The BET will utilise our innovative DC-to-DC converter which connects diesel assets to electric power sources, specifically for high voltage systems.

"The use of this technology will alleviate the need to replace existing assets with completely electric assets, saving businesses money, and expediting their path to carbon-neutral/net zero."



 

[HappyTrainGuy]

Must be new old management as it looks like it's the pie cart saga all over again

[ozbob]

^

Can you please enlighten readers what the ' pie cart saga ' was please HTG?

[HappyTrainGuy]

Locontrol on diesel (LRC) and electrics (ELRC) consists. It used to be a painted box with some radios inside on a wagon with some cement as ballast. So you can have independent control of remote locos in the consist providing a more even power distribution. In the end it came down to dollar figures with train lengths/crossing loop lengths vs wagon numbers. Newer locos, locos from other systems/grades, prototypes/upgraded locos, running 4 on the front or in Aurizons case "stowing" (now scrapped) removed the pie carts from use and kept the total number of locomotives down per consist but management kept wanting to find ways to add additional wagons to existing trains (including coal wagon heights - you can sometimes notice this on coal wagons along the Ipswich line where there's a mixture of wagons but up north they are taller as the track has a higher axle load). If this is per locomotive don't expect to see a large if any uptake in its fleet. If anything I expect that they are banking on selling the technology rather than use it themselves. They might do prototypes for hype but I don't expect a rollout of them. Especially considering they are trialling it in large unelectrified areas such as the mt Isa line (there's a reason for that - track access fees, mtce hubs and surplus fleet). If it fails on the mt Isa line so be it but if it fails on a coal network or artc network then oh boy!).

[ozbob]

^ thanks.

Here is an image of locotrol wagon taken from the video below.  At 3:00 minute mark.

You cannot view this attachment.

Queensland coal trains Part 1.mp4  2010

2564-2501-2458-2496-1554 haul a 101-car  coal train to Gladstone, Queensland, through Yarwun, eight km East of Gladstone, on 2SEP86. 
Distributed power with three locos and Locotrol behind the 50th wagon.

[verbatim9]

Just expand and improve the overhead wiring as much as possible so both freight and passenger lines can be electrified.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Yep. At the time it was quite advanced technology once again with QGR being the first to pioneer and adopt it in Australia. IIRC the first locontrol train ran from Brisbane-Toowoomba in the early 70's.

Outdated now but go back a number of years to the 2000-2010's. That was a prime example of upgrading and moving locomotives around to maximise train lengths without having to modify infrastructure. Some electric hauled coalies went diesel motive with 4000/4100 due to the lower numbers of electric units/being prioritised for particular services until more were available - so your 3550/3700/3800 classes. But even then some services never resumed electric running as evident by aurizon removing ohle infrastructure and stowing/scrapping/exporting a very large chunk of the electric and to some extent the diesel train fleet.

Expanding ohle isn't always a valid option. Especially on cost grounds. Damage to ohle during natural disasters is another factor. As too is setting up high voltage transmission lines to feed the corridor.