It was a pleasure to welcome
Robert Cairns to Hambleton Jn today. He became the first Network Rail engineer to operate the world's most powerful SFC, feeding 27.5kV to the feeder station that will feed both ECML and Transpennine routes (North, South, East and West)! It rounded off a week of firsts for UK rail. Monday started with the first short circuit tests of the complete integrated railway protection system with all features enabled. The project remit demanded safety by design and specifically, fault clearance to be as fast as practicable. The complete railway electrification is designed as a system from the distribution topology, through switchgear and protection, to the SFC supplies to form an integrated digital power supply. This enables consistent, effective fault clearance in as little as 9ms, meaning a more reliable and safer railway, with fewer dewirements. Every short circuit test effectively cleared in 9-13ms. By comparison with the same event in the same place on a "conventional" electrified railway, fault energy is reduced >99%. Then yesterday we commenced high power validation of the SFC, feeding continuous power in a cycle through the two 75MW SFCs to prove its performance. The SFC maintained exactly 27.5kV as load increased, improving journey times, reducing losses and drastically increasing the capacity of conventional, low-cost OLE. The consequence is more capacity and faster journeys on ECML with half the substations, half the live conductors over the track, simpler protection and distribution, and much less to go wrong or maintain out on track. Not to mention the years of passenger disruption avoided! There was one more first in that test. Although not yet permitted in service, for the power testing we applied temporary software and paralleled two SFCs for the first time in the UK. Controlled supply from multiple grid infeeds further reduces energy losses, further increases capacity on simple low-cost OLE, and eliminates neutral sections. Sadly we have to return to "island mode" next week, but the future is clear. This is a quantum leap forward for UK railways, delivered by REAL alliance; designed, integrated and optimised for Network Rail conditions in Siemens' UK SFC design centre, supported by global experts. We are recruiting converter designers and managers now as we gear up for the exponential growth of SFCs on 25kV railways: get in touch if you want to be part of bringing railways into the digital power age!