This issue’s cover story looks at hydrogen refueling and speaks to experts involved in some of the world’s first fixed hydrogen filling stations for rail, which are helping to accelerate the clean energy transition.
Alstom Group reveals more about its hydrogen refueling station in Lower Saxony’s Bremervörde in Germany, which is due to go into service in 2022 to refuel the Coradia iLint. According to Andreas Frixen, green rail solutions director at Alstom Group, the company’s aim is to position hydrogen as a strategic factor in the energy transition in the rail sector.
“Railway applications are ideally suited for the use of hydrogen, as the quantities required are large, predictable, localized, and constant over a long period of time,” he says. “However, building trains with fuel cells and powering them with hydrogen is a radical innovation, and such innovations need suitable infrastructure solutions.”
Marc-Andre Sahba, project manager at Deutsche Bahn (DB) for H2goesRail also reveals more about its refueling station in Germany: “The refueling system will consist of a 45ft tank container and a 40ft station. It will be integrated and used by DB at the existing depot infrastructure in Tübingen and Ulm in scheduled operation with passengers from 2024 for a one-year period. The filling station will then be located at the DB site in Tübingen,” he said.
Elsewhere in this issue, EHRT speaks to Hitachi Rail’s group CEO Andrew Barr about the company’s drive to encourage greater modal shift. “New battery and hydrogen trains are always the ‘headline’ stories and get people excited, but actually, decarbonization is about much more than that,” he says. “It’s about getting people out of their cars and on to the trains. We are trying to drive a greater modal shift by making journeys as smooth and easy as possible to encourage people to switch to green public transport options, such as rail.”
EHRT also speaks with Siemens Mobility in the US about its US$7.3bn contract to supply Amtrak with a new fleet of up to 83 multi-powered, state-of-the-art trainsets, and Brightline shares its plans to invest in environmentally friendly high-speed rail in the states.
Other topics covered include light weighting, battery technologies, power electronics, hydrogen fuel cells and storage solutions, and retrofit projects, plus much more.
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The next issue of Electric & Hybrid Rail Technology magazine will be published in March 2022. If you would like to get involved, please contact the below.
Do you have a story to tell or news to share? Please contact, Editor, Helen Norman: helen.norman@markallengroup.com.
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