Solar Powered Maglev Trains

Two recent news articles led me to think more about sustainable energy.  One was the announcement from Tesla CEO Elon Musk that his company will be producing a new line of batteries for home and business use that can be paired with solar panels to store energy.  The obvious benefit is that solar energy can be stored for use during times when sunlight is not available. 

The second article was a report that a Japanese maglev train has broken its own world speed record, hitting 603km/h (374mi/h) in a test run near Mount Fuji.  The article also stated that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would visit the US where he would pitch for a role in building a new high-speed rail line between New York and Washington.

There have been plenty of advancements in sustainable energy use recently, including increased use of wind and solar for power generation and electric powered vehicles for transportation.  However, one area that has not seen much advancement is long- and intermediate-distance mass transit.  Maglev trains have yet to catch on, mostly because of the high cost of construction.  Fossil fuel powered planes and trains still dominate this market. 

This older article indicates that fuel costs comprise almost 30% of the cost of an airline ticket.  Fuel prices have dropped recently, but there is no reason to think they will not rise again in the future.  A 100% solar powered plane or train simply does not produce enough power yet to move large loads in short periods of time.  But, what if a maglev train infrastructure were built with solar panel stations paired with batteries along the track route?  The ability to place solar panels along the entire length of track would allow for a much larger surface area to collect solar energy.  With battery storage, the train could still operate on solar power during non-daylight hours.  The system could still be tied into the electrical grid as a safety backup and also to return excess energy to the grid.

The cost to construct this system would surely be high, but it might be possible to recover the high initial cost over the long term, considering that energy costs could possibly amount to nothing.  The cost of solar panels and related equipment has been trending down recently, and that trend should continue for battery storage with the announcement from Tesla. 

The recent maglev speed record that was set does not bring it to the level of air travel yet.  A 747 has a high subsonic cruise speed of about 570 mi/h.  However, maglev trains are much faster than even the highest speed rail trains, which clock in at about 220 mi/h.  Air travel would still be the preferred option for certain destinations including overseas, remote locations and longer cross-country trips.  Maglev though, could be competitive in the intermediate trip range, such as the New York to DC route proposed by Abe.  Consider the US map below depicting a cross-country solar powered maglev track system where trains could be run on a set schedule. 

 

 

Many major cities across the country could be connected with just two east-west-tracks and three north-south tracks.  Using the newly achieved speed record of 374 mi/h, here are some estimated travel times between cities:

San Francisco to Los Angeles: maglev = 1 hour, 2 minutes (drive time = 5 hours, 50 minutes)

Boston to New York: maglev = 35 minutes (drive time = 3 hours, 50 minutes)

Dallas to Houston: maglev = 40 minutes (drive time = 3 hours, 30 minutes)

It would take a large initial investment and some political will, but solar powered maglev trains could be an economically feasible alternative for a sustainable energy future.

Why Is Science Often Misunderstood?

Once it is understood what science is in its simplest definition, it is hard to understand why anyone would not embrace the premise of science or the scientific method.  On one hand there is science, defined by Webster’s as knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.  And on the other hand, what is there?  I guess that might be best defined as a WAG (wild ass guess).  Unfortunately, I fear that science is an afterthought to most people and it takes a back seat in our educational system in the US. 

There are several recent high profile examples in the news lately where science is being challenged, including challenges to evolution, vaccinations and climate change.  So what of these recent challenges to “established” science?  On one hand, they are good.  Challenging established scientific “facts” is a critical part of the scientific method.  The theory of evolution still has gaps.  The more we study those gaps, the greater our body of knowledge becomes and the better the science becomes.  When we stop challenging science, good science becomes bad science.  On the other hand, challenges to established science become problematic when we start to think of alternative theories as facts.  For example, there is no established scientific evidence that vaccinations cause autism.  Further study of this subject is deserved.  However, rejecting the current science related to vaccinations has real world consequences, namely the spread of infectious diseases.  I have no problem with someone that challenges the science of evolution.  No true scientist should fear challenges to well established scientific theories.  However, teaching children Creationism as if it were science clouds their true understanding of science.  There is not one shred of scientific evidence that suggests, as Creationism teaches, humans were created in a single day.

 

Which brings me to climate change.  A scientific topic that has become quite politicized; a precarious position for any area of scientific study to be.  Politics has surely led to the misunderstanding of science on both sides of the debate.  On the climate change “denier” side, there is a dismissal of volumes of scientific papers and imperial evidence.  Much of the science related to climate change is well established.  Carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gasses.  They absorb radiation that would escape the earth and re-radiate it, in part, back to the earth.  The percentage that those gasses that make up of our atmosphere appears to be increasing.  Human activity is very likely to be the main reason for this increase (no, volcanoes do not put more CO₂ into the atmosphere than humans).  Global temperatures have been trending upward since the industrial revolution.
 

However, there is also a lack of understanding of science on the other end of the debate.  Often cited on this side of the debate is the fact that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.  This information is often used to label their opponents as science “deniers.”  It has been said that the scientific debate is over and the time for action has begun.  While 97% is certainly a large majority, it is not unanimous.  Science is rarely unanimous and, as they say, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.  

We should ask, what is the really critical scientific “fact” to establish in this debate from a political perspective?  Is it what has occurred in the past, what present conditions are, or what will occur in the future?  Indeed, that vast majority of humanity has not yet been affected by climate change in their past or current lives.  At least not affected nearly as much as they would be by large increases in transportation and electricity prices that would result from the elimination of use of fossil fuels. 

So the political debate should really come down to assessing what future conditions will be.  If we continue down our current path, will climate change cause ocean levels rise 30 feet in the next 100 years and cause widespread famine, or will things stay relatively the same as they are now?  I am not a climate scientist and I certainly do not have the answer to this question.  However, I’m sure that 97% of climate scientists do not have the answer to this very difficult question either.  We should be promoting a sustainable energy future for a number of reasons.  However, banning or severely restricting the use of fossil fuels could have disastrous economic consequences for millions of people.  A balance needs to be found.  In the meantime, we need to do a better job teaching science and the scientific method to our children to prevent pseudo-sciences that lead to WAGs and poor policy decisions. 

Addendum: Here is a good article about the inability to reproduce scientific results in the "soft" sciences.  Further evidence that scientific debate is never over on most subjects.