Agreed, but here it is done highly effective. The 1.8 degree temperature difference is a huge plus too - they can now also save serious amounts of power on ventilation.
TfL, you listening?
Victoria, Circle, District, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and the new Piccadilly Line trains (due soon) all have regenerative braking. The rest will follow as new trains are procured.
As anyone who travels on the Victoria line in the summer will tell you: it helps, but not much.
The heat on the underground is mad, makes it so hard to dress for the weather. Go out in a coat because it’s cold then get down on the central line and everyone is sweating hard
And even in some prototype bus, the Gyrobus, in the 50’s that used an electrically charged flywheel that was also (to some degree) regeneratively recharged when breaking:
Rather than carrying an internal combustion engine or batteries, or connecting to overhead powerlines, a gyrobus carries a large flywheel that is spun at up to 3,000 RPM by a “squirrel cage” motor.[1] Power for charging the flywheel was sourced by means of three booms mounted on the vehicle’s roof, which contacted charging points located as required or where appropriate (at passenger stops en route, or at terminals, for instance). To obtain tractive power, capacitors would excite the flywheel’s charging motor so that it became a generator, in this way transforming the energy stored in the flywheel back into electricity. Vehicle braking was electric, and some of the energy was recycled back into the flywheel, thereby extending its range.
Regenerative braking on commuter trains is nothing new, it’s been around for decades.
It is, though, as the name of the community implies, “technology.”
Agreed, but here it is done highly effective. The 1.8 degree temperature difference is a huge plus too - they can now also save serious amounts of power on ventilation.
TfL, you listening?
Victoria, Circle, District, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and the new Piccadilly Line trains (due soon) all have regenerative braking. The rest will follow as new trains are procured.
As anyone who travels on the Victoria line in the summer will tell you: it helps, but not much.
The heat on the underground is mad, makes it so hard to dress for the weather. Go out in a coat because it’s cold then get down on the central line and everyone is sweating hard
The warming is global, tubes included.
Agreed. I think TfL actually has begun looking into it but it’ll probably take years before the temperature is going to drop.
And even in some prototype bus, the Gyrobus, in the 50’s that used an electrically charged flywheel that was also (to some degree) regeneratively recharged when breaking:
Source: Wikipedia: Gyrobus
That’s incredible.
Nice, it’s probably the ancestor of the TOSA which is the same thing without the flywheel, and also from Switzerland.