London Underground powers up station with braking energy

Energy is spent in a number of forms but not recycled. As a result, we rely heavily on energy generation methods that often result in pollution or consumption of resources. While renewable energy is taking strong roots, London’s underground system has a new approach to harvest enough energy to power up to 104 homes! The braking energy is drawn from Victoria line trains. The energy captured can effectively power up the entire Holborn station for more than two days a week. Currently, the London Underground is testing an inverter system on a trial basis. This alone promises savings of up to 6 million pounds each year. An additional advantage of harvesting braking energy is the reduction of heat produced from the brakes, which means the stations are cooler. In fact, this leads to a saving of up to 1 MWh of cooling power per day.

The Mayor has taken special efforts to make the tube system greener and cleaner. “The results of this project are really exciting and show huge potential for harnessing some of the immense energy in our Tube trains. The trial puts London at the cutting edge of this kind of technology and clearly demonstrates how energy from trains can be recovered to power Tube stations, making the network more environmentally friendly and cost effective,” said Matthew Pencharz, Deputy Mayor for environment and energy.

[ Via : Pocket-lint ]