One of the most promising aspects of energy storage is that it’s used to make an existing system more efficient. If you think of the grid as the system, then energy storage can help make generation, transmission, distribution, and even customer energy use more efficient.

How many different systems are there? The grid is the (more…)

The ecomagination team at GE is pushing renewable energy limits with heat capture and hybrid dynamic braking on trains.

The energy that’s generated when stopping a train is quite substantial and GE’s ecomagination team is discovering ways to capture that energy. In a conventional train engine, that energy is (more…)

A new study identifies the high-speed rail corridors in the U.S. with the greatest potential to attract ridership in the nation’s so-called “megaregions.” The study by the group America 2050 scores 7,870 potential rail corridors using 12 critical factors, including population, employment concentrations, rail transit accessibility, and air travel markets. (more…)

On December 17^th 2009 the Sapsan (Russian for Peregrine Falcon) high-speed train made its maiden voyage from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Nothing has ground America’s collective gears worse than losing to the “Ruskies” for the majority of the past century, so this development could provide the spark needed to ratchet up speed rail development in the United States as a matter of national pride.

When Sputnik slung Yuri Gagarin into orbit, the United States launched into the space race with the Apollo missions.  America prides itself on its tech capabilities, which makes it even more puzzling why the high speed rail resistance has held out for so long and why we are behind the Russians in this regard.

The Sapsan is the latest and greatest of Russian rail, and adds to the heritage the zheleznya doroga (meaning railway, or  literally “iron road”).

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In Cape Town, South Africa, as well as in many U.S. cities, wealthy suburban dwellers choke roads driving into the city, eschewing the public transit that shuttles blue collar workers. The addition of bus and rail lines in the city’s center in anticipation of hosting the 2010 World Cup has city leaders increasing efforts to get people out of their cars and on to public transit.

In Cape Town, most white collar workers drive themselves to work, fearing crime on trains and on the 20-seat shared taxis that shuttle one-third of inner city commuters. Business leaders from the Cape Town Partnership, along with the University of Michigan and Ford, are working with the city’s largest employers to get more of the 400,000 daily commuters moving by alternative modes of transportation by establishing mobility hubs.

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