- 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.