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A comment on Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check – CleanTechnica. Parent comment

Re:Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Ch... by hakfoo on Saturday April 19, 2025 @02:18AM (#43734605)
As I understand it, straight electric locomotives would use the 'dynamic' braking to send current back up the wires. Apparently this would make for entertaining economics-- a section of the rail network where most of the tonnage went downhill could produce a net negative power bill.

With diesel-electrics, there was nowhere to the braking power, so resistor grids were the order of the day. I wonder if it would be possible or worthwhile to outfit them with battery tenders to recapture the current with modern batteries and power-management circuitry.

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Re:Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Ch... by kalleboo on Saturday April 19, 2025 @03:26AM (#43734828)
An example of such a line is in Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line

> From Riksgränsen on the national border to the Port of Narvik, the trains use only a fifth of the power they regenerate. The regenerated energy is sufficient to power the empty trains back up to the national border.

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Re:Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Ch... by rstuart4133 on Saturday April 19, 2025 @03:40AM (#43734873)
Similar thing happens in Australia: https://www.jalopnik.com/these-electric-trains-never-need-re...

The twist: these trains aren't connected to the grid. They use regenerative braking to charge batteries when carting ore to the coast, and the batteries power the trip back to the mine.

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Re:Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Ch... by masklinn on Saturday April 19, 2025 @09:42AM (#43736340)
IIRC there are mine trucks set up similarly in some locations, they're loaded at the top, regen downhill, and that's sufficient to power them back up the hill when empty.
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