Tube: London's subway is recycling power from the wasted energy of braking trains - Quartz "Commuters pressed up against the sides of a London Underground carriage will know the constant jerking as trains alternate between the bursts of speed needed to get between stations and stopping, a process that means vast amounts of energy are lost. The Tube has now begun using technology that gathers that wasted power, and feeds it back into the matrix. "When a train brakes, the motors that drive it forward turn into generators that provide the power to stop the train, turning the kinetic energy of the train into electrical energy. What an “inverter” does is allow energy to run back from the generators to the electrified rails, and thence back into the system."
Nothing new. Energy recuperation in mass transport through either local storage (batteries, capacitors, etc.) or back into the electrical grid. Most of the new rail systems designed and rolled out within the last decade have employed this technology, and is also being incorporated into trolleybus systems too. Vancouver's and Seattle's trolleybuses from New Flyer.
oh wow, we've had those in a few places i think. i believe they removed the trolley rails? haven't heard about regen though, i wonder if we're using any.
When I was really young I believe I rode on trolley cars, in Vancouver. They were phased out mid-fifties maybe? What was fascinating with the old busses, at least to me: the coin receiving machine by the driver. You dropped coins in, and they fed onto this revolving wheel with notches around the diameter, each coin in a notch, in behind a glass (or clear plastic? I'll vote glass) window. Both the driver and passenger could see what coins had been dropped in. And of course the driver had one of those coin dispensers on his belt, he was a veritable bank machine. Good luck with that now. (Searching Google Images: nobody seems to have bothered to take a pic.)
same here. you can find those machines on tv antique shows, they are fascinating. they phased the trollies out here too, in favor of cars i suppose, until public tran became important. luckily, some places still had the overhead wiring in place. p.s., i don't know if they got rid of the coin machines because the drivers were getting robbed, or rides went over a dollar. for quite awhile, you had to have correct change, so the driver didn't have to carry any. now everything is digital and prepaid.
They could have got this idea from reading about the history of electrified mountain railroads of a century ago. Regenerative braking has been around a very long time, though without the added capability of inverters.
Sadly no. I've got a great mental image of it, scoured Google, but nothing. It had like a glass face, and behind that a brass wheel, maybe 8" diameter. Around the diameter of the wheel were little semi-circular cutout, each could catch a coin. Coins dropped in would fall into the cutouts, maybe around 2 oclock, and the wheel would rotate counter-clockwise with each coin drop, so you had a right-to-left march of coins as the wheel rotated. Somerwhere around 8 oclock gravity would take over, and the coins would fall off the wheel. It afforded both the driver and customer a clear view of what had been paid so far.
