17/06/2020

Green tech startup Riding Sunbeams wins innovation funding for solar rail demonstrator

World-leading solar rail pioneers Riding Sunbeams have won funding to develop a first of a kind direct connection between renewable energy generators and electrified rail networks which run on alternating current (AC) power from overhead lines. This comes almost one year after the team successfully demonstrated a direct connection between solar panels and the direct current (DC) third rail traction system in Aldershot.

Two-thirds of the UK’s existing electrified routes - and all plans for new rail electrification in the UK - use AC overhead lines to power trains, and most of the electrified train lines around the world also use this technology. By developing a direct connection between renewables and AC rail networks, the Riding Sunbeams team will be able to apply their unique low-cost, low-carbon traction supply model to the majority of electrified routes in the UK and around the world. 

The technology needed to provide low cost power conversion from renewables to AC rail traction systems does not yet exist. As a world-first, the team’s ‘Daybreak’ demonstrator will repurpose existing technology already being used on UK rail networks for other purposes to create a new device to provide the required power conversion.

The £400k grant from the Department for Transport and InnovateUK’s First Of A Kind 2020 programme will enable the team to procure the required equipment and modify it over the next nine months. Riding Sunbeams will then install a solar array coupled with line-side storage at Quinton Rail Technology Centre at Long Marston - and power an entire train engine directly with clean, green electricity for the first time.

 Riding Sunbeams have formed a consortium with Network Rail, Angel Trains, Turbo Power Systems, the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education and Ricardo Power & Environment to deliver the project.

Alex Byford, Chief Technology Officer at Riding Sunbeams, said,

“This project is a huge step forward for our mission to develop and connect unsubsidised, direct-wire renewable generation and energy storage to power British trains, with significant social impact for line-side communities. Our latest project will showcase our ability to adapt existing technologies to directly power AC rail networks with clean, green energy and also help to support low-cost electrification of some of the most challenging remaining diesel powered lines. As a testament to the success of our DC demonstrator last year, we are once again excited to be working on the First of a Kind programme, funded by the Department for Transport and delivered by InnovateUK.”

Ivan Stone, Chief Executive of Riding Sunbeams, said,

“Using solar energy to power railways faces a number of technical challenges, but Riding Sunbeams’s world leading project teams are consistently showing how every one of these challenges can be overcome. Instead, the hardest part of realising our mission is turning out to be breaking into the traction power supply market as an SME with an innovative new value proposition. The British rail sector must get better at supporting commercial as well as technical innovation if we want to lead the world into the zero carbon future.”