I remember that when we had the ice storm in Eastern Ontario and Southern Quebec some years ago, I heard a news report that a locomotive had been used to provide power to a community, some where in Quebec I believe.
I wonder if they tried to synch with the utility’s frequency, or they were certain that utility power would not be connected while the train current was in use.
There’s a plaque at the spot:
“At the request of the mayor, Mrs. Francine Gadbois, CN locomotive 3502 powered the Boucherville Emergency Operations Centre during the January 1998 Ice Storm crisis.”
Reminds me of one of my favorite books as a toddler - “Tootle” - a locomotive that was always heading into fields to sniff flowers and such despite being told to “stay on the tracks no matter what.”
Right, most North American locomotive alternators of that period, 60’s onward GM-EMD and General Electric (a Montreal Locomotive Works model was mentioned in another post, those used GE electrical components) were 10 pole, so produced 60 hz at 2*3600/10=720 rpm but their engines ran at 900-1050 or so at full power depending. So to produce 60 hz they’d have to run at lower rpm and the loss in power might be more than proportional (if they couldn’t produce max torque at 720).
Those locomotives were AC-DC, generated AC power rectified to DC to feed to their traction motors. Older 50’s vintage diesel loco’s were DC-DC and no use to provide power to an AC electric grid. Many newer diesel locomotives are AC-AC, with frequency converters to control motor speed by varying frequency independent of engine speed. I don’t know how many poles their generators have or whether you could practically take power from the output of the frequency converters (one for each set of wheels or even individual wheel) rather than the alternator for outside use.
Though this wasn’t addressed directly in that thread, it would be real difficult to tie a jet directly into the commercial grid system or any single building’s power supply since the normal aircraft power output is regulated to around 400 Hz, not 60. But there is a few hundred KW available for use if we can solve the various compatibility challenges.
I have a vague memory of sometime in the 1980s where Hawaii was hit by a typhoon and one of the islands has it’s power generating station knocked out. The US Navy helped out by having a nuclear submarine pull up and hook up to the grid until they could get things working again.
Cruise ships are little more than floating hotels with huge electrical generators. Some ports have power connections for what’s called “alternate marine power” or “cold ironing” where the ship plugs into the local power utility and the engines are shut down. A typical power connection for this is 12MW at 6600 volts with some truly massive plugs.
There’s probably no major reason why the connection couldn’t be operated in reverse so a ship could provide power to a port and its local power grid. There would be a lot of wasted capacity due to the relatively low power rating of the shore power connection - the ship I was on recently for a vacation has a total of 64MW generating capacity if all six engines are running, so running one engine would get close to maxing out the shore power system.
I’m pretty sure it was done in New Orleans after Katrina. When they turned the Amtrak station into a detention center, they used a locomotive to supply power.
