By Kathy Ruoran Li, Junior Project Manager, Art-Science
Transport is the single biggest source of CO2 emissions at the global level, and it accounts for more than a third of total carbon emissions in Switzerland. To reduce the impact on the environment, Switzerland needs to switch to zero-carbon transport. With the development of renewable energy technology, electric or hydrogen vehicles are emerging as a promising solution.
The 30th Cafe des Sciences zoomed in on the topic of green mobility, and we were pleased to have speakers from two Swiss companies devoted to green mobility and sustainable transportation: Stephan Guggisberg, Head Outpost of Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) in Shanghai; and Anne Mandron, Global Business Development Director of STOR-H. Switzerland has one of the highest rates of train use in the world, and SBB is the most important player in the public transport sector. STOR-H is a robust startup company specializing in developing hydrogen-powered transport and producing innovative designs for small modular vehicles that are particularly suited to city driving.
We first heard from Stephan Guggisberg on SBB’s initiatives in moving towards a more environmentally friendly operation. SBB is an integrated transportation provider in Switzerland, managing 3260km of the railway network and 3500 buildings. Each day, SBB operates 5,800 trains to transport 840,000 passengers (1.32 million before Covid, compared to Switzerland’s total population of 8.7 million) and 185,000 tons of freight.
Currently, SBB’s trains already draw 90% of their energy from hydropower, and the remaining 10% is nuclear power. By 2025, all rail power is to come from renewable sources. This includes heating systems, road vehicles, diesel traction, to name a few. In addition, SBB has an ambitious goal to reach climate neutrality by 2030, which means increased energy efficiency, 100% renewable energies, and being backed by CO2 compensation to offset the remaining CO2 emissions.
Stephan also introduced SBB’s power management program and how it mitigates the challenge brought by SBB’s unique dynamic power profile. As can see in the chart below, SBB’s power consumption is full of peaks due to its synchronized timetable - when the trains depart the stations at the same time, there is a surge in energy consumption, resulting in drastic fluctuation and peaks. Instead of building extra power plants to cover these peaks, SBB has found a creative solution: peak shaving. Since these peaks were highest in the winter due to the trains’ heating services and are usually less than one minute, SBB designed a power management software to “shave” the power surge. When the system detects energy consumption reaching the threshold, it will stop heating in the train for a maximum of 2 minutes, so that the trains will still depart at the same time without impacting the passengers.
SBB also implements other specially designed programs to help decrease its power consumption. The Adaptive Train Control and vPRO functions give the locomotive crews comprehensive information about the timetable and operating situation directly on the tablet in the driver’s cab, enabling more precise, punctual, and energy-saving driving that saves about 120 GWh per year. At the end of his talk, Stephan briefly introduced the concept of Circular Economy, which recognizes that all physical resources are finite and promotes circulating all material, a step up from the recycling economy.
Then, Anne Mandron, global Business Development Director of STOR-H, joined the event virtually and introduced their technology and products, and how they can be integrated into the ecological system. STOR-H’s parent company, AAQIUS, has long invested in decreasing polluting emissions and began searching for an alternative to fully decarbonized traffic solutions four years ago. STOR-H develops hydrogen-based products focusing on light-weight vehicles, with three keywords at the core of its products: simple, safe, and freedom. The product should be simple and safe to use and should also free the user of the psychological burden - the constant anxiety from worrying about how many more kilometers can one still travel before having to charge, where or when to charge, and for how long. STOR-H’s goal is to eliminate all these anxieties so that people would naturally adopt this new way of decarbonized transportation.
STOR-H aims to provide a whole ecosystem for its customers
In this ecosystem, users would use cartridges that store hydrogen at low pressure. These cartridges can be used on a variety of vehicles, can be charged on public chargers or at home, and users can easily swap their empty cartridges for fully charged ones at dedicated “vending machines”. Customers would pay a monthly fee based on consumption, and in turn get insurance, maintenance, access to energy, and can lease STOR-H powered vehicles. Some delivery companies in Geneva are the early adopters of this new technology.
Different types of vehicles powered by STOR-H
Model of Hymont 氢梦 at China International Import Expo 2021
In China, STOR-H is now actively pushing to land its first project, as well as selected industry partners to produce the different components of the ecosystem like fuel-cell and capsules locally.
They partnered up with ICONA, an industrial design company, and revealed their first vehicle model at China International Import Expo 2021 that is to hit the Chinese market.
In 2021, STOR-H also wins the Swissnex Award for Most Innovative Startup.
During the Q&A sessions, the audience were very engaged and sparked several vigorous conversations with our speakers. If you have further questions for our speakers regarding their work, please email us at artscience.china@swissnex.org. We will try our best to forward them to our speakers.
Please click here to watch the recording of the event.