- When I heard that there was
a 100% solar powered train
in the world, I thought:
that's a ridiculous idea.
Of course solar power isn't enough
to move a massive, heavy train.
There isn't even a practical
solar powered car on the market,
and yet, here it is.
Welcome to Byron Bay, Australia,
home of the Byron Bay Railroad Company.
- This is a 70-year-old vintage train.
It was built in 1949,
after the Second World War.
And we've converted it now
to the world's first solar powered train.
Our train would typically
have had two diesel engines,
and we've taken one of those out,
kept one as a backup,
and that's been replaced
essentially with the batteries,
and a new gearbox, and
all the control equipment.
We have a 70-ton train,
but in terms of a full-size train,
that's quite light.
It's also renowned to be
very quiet in the industry.
- I'm the train driver of the
only solar train in the world.
I've been driving the train from day one,
which has been operating
for about 16 months now.
I had my own business for 31 years.
I sold the business 10 years ago
and basically did myself out of a job.
And then this job came along.
And so I put my hand up for it,
and, yes, they trained me up
and here I am driving a train.
Actually, driving a solar train is easier
than driving it when it's in diesel.
Our track's three kilometres long
and the train goes from Byron Bay
back to what we call
our North Beach Station.
And it's got a slight grade up,
slight grade down in certain sections.
So what we do is we throttle up
to get us up to the first hump in the road
and then we coast for the next,
probably, half a kilometre,
then we throttle back up again
to get us over the next
little hump in the road.
And that's how we get
ourselves into Byron.
And doing it that way, we don't use
near as much battery power.
And that's the name of the game,
save the battery power.
You got to remember that
the train weighs 70 tonne.
So once it gets up its momentum,
you've got steel on steel
so it just keeps rolling on.
We have regen braking and we
use it as much as possible.
That throws some charge back
into the batteries every time we use it.
- The battery on this train
is roughly the same size
as you'd find in an electric car.
It stores 77 kilowatt-hours.
And a run back and forth uses about five.
Now that means this takes more
power than an electric car
but not that much more
considering it carries 70 people.
- The solar on the
train works in two ways.
We have 6½ kilowatts of solar panels
on the roof of the train.
And then in addition to that,
we have a 30 kilowatt array
on top of the platform here.
So the combined there is 36½ kilowatts
and we can produce, on a good day,
up to 150 kilowatt-hours of energy.
The solar panels on the roof of the train
are constantly doing a trickle charge
of the battery on the train.
And then a couple of times a day,
just to top up the battery,
we plug it into here at the platform
like an electric car,
using electric car equipment.
This is a net carbon positive project
and in the first year of service
we put 60,000 kilowatt-hours
back into the grid
on top of the power that we used
which is enough to power 17
three-bedroom houses.
As an example, in the peak of summer
with the low amount of
energy used per trip,
we can actually run a whole day's service
without topping up the charge,
just from the 6½ kilowatt array
on the roof of the train
and the 77 kilowatt battery bank.
- This isn't something
that would work everywhere
or even that should work everywhere.
The weather here is
perfect for solar power
and this is a small independent railway
with one bit of straight flat track
and a train that can spend
some time plugged in.
For most railroad companies,
it'll be a better idea to add a third rail
or some overhead power lines
and run the train off
the regular power grid
and then put some solar panels
on the station roof as well.
But as a demonstration of what's
possible with solar power,
and as a neat way to bring some
tourists to your train line,
it's a pretty good idea.
- We've been running for
a little bit over a year.
We've carried over 100,000
passengers in that time
and we haven't missed a service.
- Thanks to all the team at
the Byron Bay Railroad Company.
Pull down the description
for more about them and about this train.
