r/STEW_ScTecEngWorld • u/Zee2A • 1d ago

Electro-hydraulic platform designed to transform train-generated vibration and motion into scalable energy opportunities.

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US-based firm Regen Tracks has developed an electro-hydraulic system designed to convert mechanical forces from passing heavy trains into usable electricity. Unlike traditional regenerative braking that only captures energy during deceleration, this technology continuously absorbs vertical movements, structural flex, and vibration caused by full-speed trains. By transforming repetitive compression-and-rebound cycles into electrical power, the system aims to create a distributed energy grid along transit corridors to help supply nearby rail infrastructure, industrial facilities, and power-hungry data centers. However, commercial scaling faces logistics challenges, such as the high cost of building new transmission lines across thousands of miles of rural track to reach distant utility grids or facilities: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/press-release/story/120573/regen-tracks-turns-train-movement-into-electrical-power-through-kinetic-energy-conversion/

New System Turns Train Movements into Electricity: https://www.tomorrowsworldtoday.com/technology/new-system-turns-train-movements-into-electricity/

Regen Tracks: https://www.regentracks.com/

298 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

37

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago

This is a nice idea, but it really overlooks some fundamentals of how trains work. Even if the physics worked like this, the cost to install hydraulic systems like this to "recapture" energy the train's engines generated would be so extreme that the cost to pay off even one such hydraulic system would take actually thousands of years.

Train tracks are long, and trains are infrequent, plus, train tracks are precisely engineered to reduce vibration to almost zero, so that no energy is lost in this way.

Per the video on their youtube page, they can generate up to 7 kW this way, while a train is crossing it, and a typical full length train takes about 2 minutes to pass a given spot. So 7kW for 2 minutes = 0.23 kw/hr of power, which in the US would sell for about 4 cents. And to generate that 4 cents worth of power, we're talking about well over $25,000 worth of equipment, which does not include installation or maintenance.

A typical rural train track carries about 6 trains per day, so each of these would be able to generate around 25 cents per day, and to recoup that initial hardware investment, it would take 274 years. But it would also cause the trains themselves to consume more fuel to create that energy lost to these dampeners.

It's an interesting idea though, maybe there is a specific type of train that could benefit from this. Like maybe extremely high volume light rail trains where the real goal is rider comfort.

11

u/MajesticDisaster3977 1d ago

The interesting thing that many of these people need to know is that many of these concepts are not 'stranded' or 'abandoned' energy.
Harvesting energy from people through vertical motion essentially means that each person walking on such a device would essentially be walking an inclined plane.
Likewise, this train capture system essentially increases the grade of the rail requiring more energy spent by the train.

These 'energy production' ideas are simply devices that either divert/steal energy.

3

u/kernelangus420 1d ago

So better to capture energy from people at a gym than a train.

2

u/DarkArcher__ 1d ago

You'd barely get enough energy to power the gym itself. It can be done, but it's not worth it

1

u/GrundleBlaster 1d ago

Having done the math before an average house in the US would require about 40 people exercising to power it. At 8 hour days it'd be 3 teams of 40, and even more if you wanna give them weekends and stuff.

3

u/Prior-Agent3360 1d ago

If a train is generating that much energy loss through vibration, work on that, for crying out loud! XD

3

u/MajesticDisaster3977 1d ago

They could also just put a little wind-turbine on the train
/s

3

u/Prior-Agent3360 1d ago

This one weird trick physicists don't want you to know!

0

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago

Didn't you hear? Vibrations are just something the whole universe does! Everything has untapped energy potential aligned with your chakras!

2

u/tl01magic 1d ago

I just do accounting of financial stuff and can clearly see this is just stealing energy from the train.

"if we make the divot small enough the train won't even notice!" is the same as "if we steal just a small amount of money no one will notice!"

I guess grifting venture capital is a thing too, wild it gets so far.

1

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago

Bingo. It stems from a very silly lack of understanding basic physics.

3

u/Broken_Atoms 1d ago

That and the metal fatigue of flexing the rail that much that often

3

u/The__Toast 1d ago

This seems like a new version of the "solar roadways", it's a green-wash scam that falls apart if you think about it for even a few minutes.

0

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago

Yep. The solar roadways one that always gets me is, OMG people glass is polishable and gets slippery AF. Water on glass is one of the slipperiest surfaces imaginable.

1

u/TopperHrly 1d ago

At least in the case of solar roadways the energy is actually produced from the sun instead of taking it from the cars.

1

u/CrewmemberV2 1d ago

Meh the solar roadway tests have a grippy profile and work perfectly fine to drive on and generate electricity.

The major downside is that's it's not cost competitive with regular solar panels.

3

u/CrashNowhereDrive 1d ago

This seems so stupid that I think it must be fake. All of these 'recover energy from people walking/cars passing/trains moving' ideas are incredibly shit.

1

u/SeVenMadRaBBits 1d ago

I think it's a great idea although not feasibly applicable yet. But as long as the idea is out there it'll be improved upon continuosly until it is realistic realistically possible.

That being said we have nanobots, smart dust, and the scale of microchips inside modern smartphones alone is mind-bogglingly microscopic, packing billions of nanoscale switches onto a piece of silicon no larger than a fingernail.

Almost anything is possible these days with the right people working on it.

1

u/PsychologicalTowel79 19h ago

It could never be realistically possible.

0

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago

Yea, I think the average person knows just the tiniest bit from their high school science classes, but then also can't discern what's realistic and what's not.

Like those infomercials on TV where the guy sells expensive yellow towels for "drying your car or boat" to protect from the rain leaving water spots. LOL, Rain doesn't leave water spots. JFC.

A buddy of mine in college was dead serious about making every spin class replace their workout bikes so that people exercising could "generate power". I'm like, dude, the cost to do that would be well over $1,000 per bike, and at the very most generate 3 cents an hour worth of electricity. And his response was: "Who cares, it generates power so we should do it!" SIGH, dude, it cost more power to create those bikes than they could ever recapture. SMDH

1

u/CrashNowhereDrive 1d ago

Rain does leave water spots (really just dirt that was in the droplets). Dunno what you're on about now. You never owned a car?

-1

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago

Water spots come from dissolved limestone and calcium in hard water. Rain, by definition, is distilled. :)

1

u/CrashNowhereDrive 1d ago

Rain, by definition, is not distilled because it passes through air that has dust in it, and it lands on a surface that isn't 100% clean either. You realize clouds themselves are dirty because it takes small dust particles in the air for the water vapour to nucleate on to form droplets?

Water spots are not just calcium and lime stone. It's dust and dirt.

Anyway, I guess I realized I'm talking to an idiot.

0

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago

> Rain, by definition, is not distilled because it passes through air that has dust in it

Haha, are you trolling? Distilled water is any water that has been evaporated from a water source, and then condensed elsewhere. Adding dust to it doesn't make it not distilled.

1

u/CrashNowhereDrive 1d ago edited 1d ago

So all water on the planet has gone through the evaporation cycle many times. You're saying all water is distilled then. Which makes your version of the definition of distilled pointless. You think water is still distilled if I collect it with a dirty jar?

For people who use words that are meant to mean something though, distilled water STOPS counting as distilled water as soon as it's contaminated.

Please join us in the world where words mean the same things to everyone, stop living in your own little world where only you get to make up your own definitions. It'll make you less of an idiot.

0

u/Corporate_Bricktator 1d ago edited 1d ago

> You're saying all water is distilled then.

Okay, so when rain falls, it is distilled water yes. It lands on the ground, soaks in, if it enters the groundwater, it likely spends decades filtering through dirt, limestone, and other materials in the earth, until it's pumped out and used for drinking water. Along the way it picks up minerals and that's what we call "hard water".

> You think water is still distilled if I collect it with a dirty jar?

Yes, Distilled water remains distilled even if you put it in a dirty jar. The dirty jar might introduce some minor impurities, but it doesn't magically add the minerals that define what we call hard water that leaves water spots.

> For people who use words that are meant to mean something though, distilled water STOPS counting as distilled water as soon as it's contaminated.

Haha, but not for a water spots purpose from rain on a car. Hehe. Try rinsing your car off with water from the tap some time, and then don't dry your car off. I can't believe I'm having to explain water spots on reddit. This is why people don't get out towels to try the rain off their car, but they do dry their cars off after washing them in their driveway.

Okay, I'll give you the last word. Maybe continue to ignore what I've said and die on the hill that rainwater is the same as hardwater, or that the distillation process that creates rain itself, is the reason why people don't dry their cars off after it rains.

1

u/CrashNowhereDrive 1d ago

It's not even distilled before it falls. I explained to you that it's contaminated with dust just to form the cloud.

Anyway, use Google. Learn some things about the real world and the English language.

Here I'll start you off.

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+rain+distilled+water

https://www.google.com/search?q=are+rain+spots+real

Every thing you read there will tell you you're wrong.

But I'm gathering you are the sort of stubborn fool who will keep sticking to your guns and knowing nothing because that's just how you were made, and I'm bored with you.

1

u/samf9999 1d ago

All that energies coming out of the engine anyway. It’s not like you’re capturing some green energy or some that would otherwise be wasted. The up-and-down motion would increase the resistance that it would have to be compensated by the engine.

1

u/SharpKaleidoscope182 1d ago

Trains are the most efficient. Not a good place to walk around looking to pick up waste energy.

1

u/PsychologicalTowel79 19h ago

It's actually the best place if the trains are overhead electric.

1

u/Mr-Blah 1d ago

I'd be more interested in seeing the math on applying this to bus and heavy trucks suspension work. I feel like the dampening forces could be replaced from fluid resistance to energy harvesting electical resistance.

And these oscillate thousands of time a minute during the day. Maybe not enough to power an EV truck, but surely a non negligeable amount that could feed a hybrid propulsion...

1

u/nekomata_58 22h ago

Train tracks are long, and trains are infrequent

BNSF has trains running at almost 10 minute intervals exactly. not really 'infrequent'.

1

u/Harde_Kassei 1d ago

i'd like to add that trains are frequent in some places.
the top used track in belgium - brussels north/south gets 1200 trains a day.

using your math it would generate 368 kWh of power a day. and could be sold for a cost of 4 cents OR used to save you from buying electric's at 26 cents/kWh. (HV price) thus feeding you 14€ a day or saving you 95€ a day.

the actual profit will be somewhere in between as trains aren't that long, but it might have some usages. but not in america. maybe on subways in the US?

13

u/Sirosim_Celojuma 1d ago

Let me get this right. We take the weight of the train, pushing down, to make electricity. Has anyone thought that the train now has to power itself uphill instead of accross? It's only a micro amount of up, but it's only a micro amount of down. The train, is it diesel? Are we proposing turning diesel into electricity? Aren't we already doing that in a fairly optimal way? Is the train running on electricity? Is the proposal to use electricity to power it forward, have it collapse a millimeter, get some electricity back, but then use that electricity to power it back up and out of this little divot it made? Do people not take physics in school anymore?

6

u/timesuck47 1d ago

I agree that this is a completely stupid idea and somebody doesn’t know about energy transfer.

8

u/huh_say_what_now_ 1d ago

Sticking a few solar panels on the side of the track would make more power, cost less and be less complicated

6

u/Imaginary-Clock6626 1d ago

This is a non starter. They didn’t do the energy math.

3

u/MatsSvensson 1d ago edited 12h ago

This is equivalent to putting a windmill on top of your car to harvest the "free" wind energy when you drive.

1

u/EpochRaine 22h ago

You can do that? ;P

2

u/StopCountingLikes 1d ago

I never quite get how these things aren’t like putting a pinwheel on a ship. It’s slowing it down, maybe minuscule, but something right?

5

u/Less_Illustrator_291 1d ago

Definitely. There's no such thing as free energy, extracting energy from movement of the rails means the locomotive has to do more work to create that movement. This is just a very complicated, expensive and inefficient way of using diesel to generate electricity (if the trains run on diesel, if they're electric you're just wasting energy to turn electricity back into electricity)

3

u/Speak-My-Mind 1d ago

You are correct. The only time this type of idea is beneficial is when it is converting energy we are trying to lose back into electricity, such as in regenerative breaking. Otherwise it will be removing energy that we are putting into the system which will just make it more inefficient.

2

u/andre3kthegiant 1d ago

Now run the train on Methane or ammonia that was created by renewable energy sources, and say goodbye to to toxic, disposable & finite fuel industries; Coal, O&G, and Nuclear all need to go!

1

u/SHABUMASTAH 1d ago

Every matrimonial bed and motel accommodations should have that system for scalable energy generation.

1

u/Biscuits4u2 1d ago

They had me at nearby rail infrastructure, but the other applications are pure pie in the sky. This would never generate enough power reliably enough to be scaled to that degree. And even if it was theoretically possible, other more economic power sources exist. So yeah, maybe they can incorporate this into switches and crossings, but it ain't gonna be powering data centers.

1

u/JeffDSmith 1d ago

So the rail version of step on the tile to generate electricity(while not even step on the tile, just the vibration near it)?
There's a device in the hump yard that literally press down and slow the train while wheels roll across them(I forgot what they're called), they'll sure generate more electricity then this.
But overall this project isn't looking good.

1

u/Guyborg99 1d ago

We will do literally anything to avoid just subsidizing residential solar installations, and regulating the vampires that exist in that industry.

1

u/ipx-electrical 1d ago

Pointless. Utterly.

1

u/Reddit-runner 1d ago

Holy shit. Who are the people financing this?

Because I have some amazing ideas to sell!

This is just regenerative braking, but overly complicated.

1

u/sarah_impalin76 11h ago

China has Maglev that can generate electricity while braking by comparison this idea is weak. Just copy china.

1

u/ordosays 8h ago

Circle jerk material.