This train on the other hand seems superior in every way for this specific use case (getting ore from high altitude to low altidude and empty trains back up)
Either way it sounds brilliant, both simpler and better than catenaries, I like it!
As for your swimming in money comment, I'm not sure what you mean; the Soviet Union was an industrial powerhouse and the second largest economy in the world between WW2 and the mid-80's, its economic decline only started after that with economic liberalisation under Gorbachev, followed by both oil price collapse and the costliest disaster in human history (until then), the Chernobyl incident, both in '86. Japan overtook it as the 2nd largest economy only by 1990.
Statistics about the Soviet economy are notoriously hard to make sense of. First, they ran a rather weird economic system (compared to the west), and second, you can't necessarily trust the statistics, there weren't really any independent organisations at all like we have in democracies. No independent media to check, no independent statistical institutes etc.
Even in the west environmentalism was only just getting en vogue in the second half of the 20th century. But the Soviet Union takes the cake in terms of how much environmental damage they were willing to take for a bit of extra economic output.
They also didn't have the same kind of battery capacity as we have today.
Electrified rail avoids shipping the engine and the fuel with the load, which ia often a big win in efficiency.
That $50mln would maybe be enough to electrify a single, 40km track.
If they devise a grid tie system using a third rail to receive/transmit power, they could avoid placing a battery on the train and excess energy could be provided to the grid, which would be even more cost effective. Even if they opt out of connecting to the grid, the battery could be located at a stationary location rather than carried by the train, which should reduce the train’s permanent mass, lowering the size of the battery needed.
Industrial locomotives are ~10MW and 12kV or similar. So the entire ..err ..drive train is probably $10M? And the regen is free? But you have to step-up and -down to the battery?
Maybe a more informed reader can.. ahem... step in and inform us?
Instead of a freight train lets consider the slightly aged (god I'm old) electric train I would once have caught when I worked in London. As you say, each set of wheels can be braked independently and they're all using regenerative electric motors, so that's maybe 40 wheel sets on the train I'm thinking of. But, traction current is supplied at only a maximum of four points on that train, I'd guess only one is actually ever in use for simplicity.
So instead of "electrical havoc" it's a pretty simple local problem for the engineers designing the train.
Though I'm not sure if any others used a battery. In a simple mechanical version you just connect two carts to each other so one is pulled up while the other goes down.
As you note direct gravity devices are centuries old: water balances, gravity balances, paired boat lifts (like the Falkirk wheel), …
> Unspecified production includes, for example, gas power, wave power and braking power. Production from plants with more than one production type and where these can not be separated is also included in this category.
Braking power refers to regenerative braking, energy that's put back on the grid from the electric trains. Presumably from the iron ore trains from up north.
Unfortunately it does not list exactly how much of the 'Not Specified' is from braking power alone. Generation in this category as we speak is 589 MW.
Battery-electric "Infinity Train" will charge itself using potential energy.
(Potential energy being stored in the position of the mined ore)
Posted 3 days ago (12 points, 1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44339903
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVaWmEI9O1w
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