The webinar was dedicated to best practices in trackside energy storage and was organised by the Sector’s Chairs, Bart Van der Spiegel, Infrabel, Gerald Olde Monnikhof, ProRail and Philippe Stefanos, UIC. Around 120 participants attended the meeting.
The aim of the workshop was to explore how stationary energy storage can help with the development of smart reversible substations, energy recovery and buffering for renewable and recovered energy to achieve decarbonisation of the railways. It was split into two sessions, with the first session dedicated to overviews, research and innovation.
Johan Soderbom of the European Battery Alliance (EBA) opened the workshop and explained that there is an enormous growth in demand for batteries as it is becoming a very mature technology. He noted that battery production in Europe is booming, catalysed by concerted policy and investment efforts. Stationary storage is also booming as a means of utility storage in large parts of the US and in Europe. Lithium is currently the most widespread and competitive battery technology on the market.
Mr Soderbom recalled the situation in 2017, when there was no battery production in Europe. He noted that there would be a major demand for skills and concluded by discussing the current bottlenecks and future possible applications for road and rail.
Herman Sibbel of Movare and Martijn Wolf of Ricardo Rail then spoke about sustainability goals at NS and ProRail. They provided background information on the trackside energy storage project, applications for energy storage (identifying nine use cases), alignment of opportunities with sustainability goals and next steps.
Mr Takeshi Konishi, Railway Technical Research Institute (Japan Railways) talked about the traditional trackside energy storage system (TESS) and TESS application status in Japan, explaining the fundamental constitution of TESS in Japan.
The second part of the workshop focused on application of the technology and its use as part of a decarbonisation strategy and featured two presentations.
Tony Letrouvé, SNCF Innovation and Research and Hervé Caron, SNCF Réseau, presented the use and criteria of the trackside energy system and the specification of ESS for infrastructure, safety and tests in industrial laboratories.
Koji Kasai of JR East gave the final presentation, providing an overview of JR East’s strategy for energy and environment – including the use of stationary storage systems – for greener stations. Finally, he provided an overview of the zero-carbon challenge for 2050.
The supporting media for the workshop will be made available on the event webpage: https://uic.org/events/trackside-energy-storage
