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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/barcelona-subway-trains-power-stations/>
"Most of the passengers emerging from the station in Bellvitge, a working-class
neighborhood outside Barcelona, have no idea just how innovative the city’s
subway system is. Using technology not unlike the regenerative braking found in
hybrids and electric vehicles, the trains they ride generate some of the power
flowing to the EV chargers in the nearby parking lot, the lights illuminating
the station, and the escalators taking them to the platforms.
Every time a train rumbles to a stop, the energy generated by all that friction
is converted to electricity, which is fed through inverters and distributed
throughout the subway system. One-third of that powers the trains; the rest
provides juice to station amenities and a growing network of EV chargers.
The ultra-fast charger outside the Bellvitge station is among four
electrolineras — Spanish for “electric gas stations” — that went up in July.
The city’s main transit operator, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB),
plans to add three more as the project, called MetroCHARGE, expands. “We’re
trying to take advantage of the power that’s already in the metro system and
use that spare energy to feed EV chargers on the street,” said Marc Iglesias,
head of sustainable mobility at Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona, a regional
agency working with TMB on the project.
Each year, residents and tourists take 440 million trips on Barcelona’s subway
system, which includes 165 stations linked by 78 miles of track. The transit
agency has installed three inverters so far; 13 more are in progress. Once
they’re all in place by the end of September, it expects regenerative braking
to provide 41 percent of the energy needed to power the trains, a renewable
source of energy it says will save about 3,885 metric tons of CO₂ emissions
annually.
Although many cities, including Vienna, Philadelphia and São Paulo, use
regenerative braking to some degree, Barcelona is among the few to use it so
extensively and the first to tap it for electric vehicle charging
infrastructure. Utilizing energy that is otherwise lost as heat when a train
slows can significantly reduce a transit system’s energy consumption. (Other
efforts, such as optimizing the settings for Barcelona’s semi-autonomous trains
and using AI to optimize the ventilation in each car, have further reduced
energy needs by double-digit margins.)
With the adoption of MetroCHARGE, 33 percent of the energy used by the trains
comes from regenerative braking, or enough to power 25 subway stations, said
Jordi Picas, who leads the project and is director of metro systems at TMB. In
subway systems that don’t deploy regenerative braking, “there’s so much energy
that’s not being used, and not only is it lost, it also generates heat that
spreads inside the tunnels and increases the temperature,” he said. Since
implementing regenerative braking, the temperature in Barcelona’s subway system
has decreased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
