UK: Porterbrook has announced a £1·7m deal with Siemens Mobility to purchase a Rail Charging Converter, a modular and containerised system developed to enable a battery-powered train to be recharged from standard local power supply cables in places where 25 kV 50 Hz overhead electrification is not available.
The RCC will be installed at Porterbrook’s Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre, as part of a package of track and power upgrades being undertaken at the site which has 20 km of track for testing, engineering and storage.
‘This innovative technology will provide a permanent traction power solution to Long Marston’, said Porterbrook Chief Operating Officer Ben Ackroyd, on November 27. ‘It is the perfect site to use the RCC, which can help the UK railway to extend cleaner battery EMU operation across the network.’
The RCC concept has been developed by Siemens Mobility, the University of York, Network Rail, West Coast Main Line operators and Angel Trains, supported with £59 910 from the Department for Transport through Innovate UK’s 2022 First of a Kind programme.
‘Our Rail Charging Converter, delivered here in the UK, can help transform journeys for passengers by supporting trains to use clean power in the form of battery or electric’, said Rob Morris, Joint CEO at Siemens Mobility UK.
