RGC Connects Two North American Networks
WELCOME to the RAIL-GRID COLLABORATIVE. We bring together experts operators, innovators, and policy makers to support GROWTH and SUSTAINABILITY across rail transportation and electric power systems.
- Promoting GRID AND RAIL EXPANSION, including transmission co-location
- MODERNIZING and electrifying rail operations
- Coordinating technology and corridor PLANNING & POLICY
- Supporting joint action and investment for network RELIABILITY AND RESILIENCE
- Transparency for INVESTORS & REGULATORS through cross-sector collaboration
JOIN RGC TODAY! HELP US ENHANCE NORTH AMERICA'S CRITICAL NETWORK INDUSTRIES!
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RGC's Member-Driven Approach to Change
WHERE COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES EXIST
Let’s pursue direct (and private, where necessary) negotiations about individual, limited-term commercial arrangements or specific transactions, projects, or outcomes the parties can achieve. RGC accounts for investor and market demands, operational concerns, structural barriers and information deficits, resource and technology needs, and the opportunities and the historical position that rail holds in the marketplace
WHERE PUBLIC POLICY OPPORTUNTIES OR PROBLEMS EXIST
The electric and railroad industries can utilize RGC to pursue project or policy objectives, meet the demands of public policy and employ an understanding of FEDERAL, STATE, and LOCAL laws and processes as a tool of public advocacy. RGC is reaching out to energy regulators and planners, state rail planners, and funding programs, to identify and seize benefits for all classes of rail and grid participants.
JOINT PROBLEM-SOLVING
A classic example of JOINT PROBLEM-SOLVING involves co-location of electric transmission lines and cables within railroad and other transportation rights-of-way as a contribution to both strengthening the national electrical grid, decarbonizing railroad system components, and accelerating operational innovation through catenary, energy storage, and other applications.
BEST INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE
Industry intelligence serves policy makers, and RGC participants and stakeholders require TIMELY POLICY INPUT. Because the services and benefits of electric grid and rail transport operations are economy-wide and impact states, markets, small communities in diverse regions of the country, RGC will develop capabilities to identify trends and developments among industrial strategies, regional transmission plans, state and national rail plans, and state integrated resource plans, where future projects are planned for funding and development.
ACCESS TO DATA
Where a paucity of commercial, industrial, or technological data or significant barriers to economic development exists, new research and data collection will assist decision making by industry and public interests. Grid and rail expansion require better information on railroad rights-of-way, system requirements, energy demand, system interconnection, and more coordinated state siting requirements, that can address the drag on new projects, such as the co-location of charging facilities, electric generation and transmission facilities, or data centers within transportation geospatial assets.
FRESH START
Major research projects, long absent from rail infrastructure planning, can stimulate new economic activity. The Federal Railroad Administration’s recent study “Cost and Benefit Framework for Modern Railway Electrification Options,” together with new industry experience co-locating rail and electric facilities, demonstrate the feasibility of deploying more efficient electric generation and transmission resources for locomotive power, ways to identify the cost and benefits of overcoming uneconomic barriers, methods of reducing costs, development timelines, and the operational risks of transmission colocation. Rail system electrification, starting with components (e.g., switchyards, substations, branch lines) is necessarily ‘incremental.’
Projects and Developments
PROPOSED PROJECTS / SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Cool Water Electric Inconnection
Proposal The BNSF-owned corridor between San Bernardino and Barstow offers a power transmission path which connects the nation’s 2nd large metropolitan area with the tremendous solar and wind energy resources of the Mojave Desert. This and other lines could be electrified to expand rfreight rail export capacity from the major ports of Long Beach and LA.
California High Speed Rail
NORTHEAST U.S. PROJECTS & HISTORY
Champlain HUdson Power Express The use of railroad rights-of-way for hosting buried high voltage lines (500kV, HVDC) is being pioneered in the Northeast by the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE), which delivers low-cost Quebec hydropower across the Canada-U.S. border to its southern terminus in New York City, in part along more than 100 miles of CSX right-of-way.
HISTORY: Railroqading is over 250 years old in the Northeast quadrant of the U.S. It has grown chaotically, with competing lines offering dense, often duplicative coverage for both passenger and freight service. The “Northeast Rail Corridor” (NEC) connects New England (Boston) to the Mid-Atlantic (Washington, D.C.), by North America’s longest stretch of electrically powered railroad. NEC’s principal owner is Amtrak, but electrically powered regional passenger rail systems also serve Atlantic coastal cities over shared trackage. Freight moves over three major (Class I) railroads - CSX, Canadian National, and Norfolk Southern - and dozens of smaller Class II and III railroads also known as ‘shortlines’. All freight trains (electric traction motors) are currently diesel powered.
US MIDWEST
SOO Green HVDC Link. This project takes advantage of co-location within the rights of way (ROWs) of at least three railroads --CP, BNSF,, and illinois Railways. The line was approved by the Iowa Utiity Board. State authority over interstate rail lines varies. The SOO Green afacilities will deliver 2,100 MW of wind power principally through underground cable, from western Iowa in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) footprint into the PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization,or RTO, that operates the grid and wholesale electricity markets in 13 Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic states, and the Distric of Columbia. Although administrative investigation and litigation involving processes governing its interconnection has slowed this "merchant" project, SOO Green sponsors expect its electrification by 2029 or 2030.