Batteries are to be fitted to Midland Metro’s fleet of CAF Urbos 3 trams to allow catenary-free operation in parts of the city.
Approval from the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority (ITA) means that an extension of the network from New Street to Centenary Square will be able to go ahead without needing overhead lines in Victoria Square.
All 21 trams of the current fleet, and four additional units on order, will be fitted with batteries, which allow the trams to operate for short periods without power from overhead lines.
ITA said it had looked at batteries when it was procuring the new fleet in 2012, but the technology hadn’t matured enough to cope with the particular challenges posed by Birmingham’s city centre extension route.
According to CAF, the lithium ion batteries have improved to the point where they will now be able to negotiate the steep city centre gradients.
Councillor John McNicholas, chairman of the ITA’s delivery committee, said: “When we placed the order in 2012 for our new fleet of trams the ITA had the vision for them being capable of running without overhead wires.
“The technology then was not sufficiently developed to incorporate into the Birmingham city centre extension, but provision was made within the contract that should technology catch up the new trams could be retro-fitted with batteries.
“That is now the case and the application of battery technology on this scale in the West Midlands will be a historic first for the UK light rail industry and the modern era of British tramways.”
Birmingham will be the first city in the UK to use the technology. The batteries will be fitted to the roof of the vehicles and recharge when the tram moves back under the wires.
Routes identified for catenary-free operation include the entire Birmingham Centenary Square extension, the Birmingham-Edgbaston extension, the Birmingham Eastside extension, which will stop at the future Curzon Street HS2 station, and the Wolverhampton city centre extension.
Removing the need for overhead lines on these routes will save £650,000, ITA has said. However, the cost of procuring and installing the batteries isn’t yet known.
ITA said negotiations are now underway with battery suppliers.
The Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership will contribute £3.15 million to the project, with UKTram providing a further £1 million.
A new way of trams to operate on both overhead wires with the pantograph and on battery operated without the need of overhead electrification. Same with electric multiple unit trains that are tested to operate on both electrified and non-electrified lines just like the Class 379 Electrostar IPEMU that was tested on both AC 25kv operation and on DC Battery operation on the Mayflower Line between Manningtree and Harwich Town in Essex, East Anglia few years ago.
From my limited expertise with Li-Ion batteries such solution may be pretty heavy to the taxpayers pocket (they do not come cheap!). Furthermore it will also be expensive to the environment (lots of lithium to dispose after a couple of years). Options would be using either clever connection via tracks on the ground and/or a flywheel (or similar solution).
I agree with you Rob Kostecki. Those batteries are not cheap. Li-lon batteries are very expensive (over £100,000 or even over £1million).
Wow. That’s helpful. Can you give me a more specific price range?
Well those batteries do come at a cost more than buying a usual household batteries (AAA & AA) that costs £3.99-£4.99 or £1 from a Pound shop.
Li-ion batteries are often found in mobile phones, so they don’t all have to be expensive. Obviously heavy-duty units cost more, but can be purchased in bulk.
Sounds about right.
It is sad that professional engineers appear no longer able to think with anything other than a technical mind set, as evidenced by their efforts in the design of tramway overhead, where one grotesquely clumsy new installation follows another in Great Britain. Why is it not possible to learn from earlier British tramway practice, or from practice abroad where the skills were not lost and visually light, tidily strung wiring continues to serve modern tramways?
Of all modern British tramways, perhaps the rebuilt Blackpool system stands out well (with some minor aesthetic lapses) in its continued use of light ‘fans’ of wiring using span and bridle wires. (One thinks particularly of the substantially ‘pole-free’ overhead over the complex road junction at Thornton Cleveleys.) Such tidy, pole-free wiring, over very wide ground areas, continues to serve historic squares, bridges, and historic areas in many European cities and elsewhere, as it always has done. In contrast, most modern British ‘tramways’, one after another, employ the ugliest poles, in great number, to carry the contact wire round curves as, for example, most grossly evident in Manchester and at Haymarket station in Edinburgh.
Nor is there apparently the ability to learn from recent work in this country, or abroad. In this
regard, for example, Edinburgh has blindly followed Sheffield in having contact wire stagger with both lines going left and right, rather than in and out, so the whole arrangement takes on the appearance of staggering drunkenly down the road. In Edinburgh, the use of live bracket arms, as on a main line railway, also reduces the scope for aesthetic design of the centre poles, which was a matter of paramount importance in the earlier system, and of which many better examples may still be seen in Europe.
Nor again is the use of railway style pull-offs, to establish contact wire stagger, congruent with established tramway practice. Indeed, many long established tramways with recent modernisation or extension (e.g. Geneva or Vienna) show that the contact wire may be hung perfectly satisfactorily, with stagger, by allowing the hanger to lean into the stagger. No need for a further pull-off arm or its added visual intrusion.
It is manifestly obvious that current British tramway engineering is ‘learning on the job’. Unfortunately, we are all paying for it, aesthetically, and from our pockets.
W. Riggs
Hear hear! The Great Western electrification is another sorry example with excessive steelwork and gantries, or even double gantries, used instead of the elegant span wires used in the ECML and elsewhere. There is a need for people with some aesthetic sense to take control or at last have some input.
Elegant span wires? How about overhead lines that don’t come down every other week?
Elegant and robust, the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. So much of our railway infrastructure is being disfigured and made awkward in the name of reliability and cost. Look at the stations on the Borders railway, canopies that don’t keep out the rain, horrible fencing etc.
Canopies I agree with, but there’s a need to keep infrastructure costs down and that’s what the Series 1 OLE does. Appearance is very much down to opinion.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? So why do people go out of their way to visit certain cities – e.g. Oxford but ignore other places? Just think what the GW electrification would have cost if Series 1 OLE had not been used! Funny that British Rail could do a similar job for so much less.
In BR days it was possible to jack up masts and cables in between passing trains. Nowadays the intense traffic levels make it impossible to do during the day. And don’t forget the lack of major investment until ten years ago and the lost experience. It’s not at all comparable.