SIEMENS

It’s a hot summer day in London and the U.K. capital is sweating. The air is thick and even more tourists than usual are enjoying the city’s sights. Masses of people crowd onto the narrow pavements and walk between cars that barely seem to move in the constantly congested streets of the inner city. Such traffic congestion is one reason why London has the worst air quality of any European city. Those looking to cool off might decide to head for the “tube,” the oldest subway system in the world. After all, its stations are located at a considerable depth below street level and you would expect the air to be cooler there.

The London underground has been in service since 1863. Although it’s overcrowded, it remains the backbone of the city’s public transport system, moving more than one billion passengers each year. Many who venture down into the tube are surprised to find that rather than being refreshingly cool, it’s even hotter than above ground. Over the decades, constant train traffic has caused the ground to heat up. Temperatures as high as 47 degrees Celsius have been registered in the city’s stations, as Steve Scrimshaw from Siemens Mobility reports.

As part of a tender, Siemens is working on a preliminary study for the development of future subway trains for London. New air-conditioned rail vehicles will enter service in 2018. “More than anything else, the trains need to be light,” says Scrimshaw. “Lower weight means lower energy consumption. Siemens’ design would increase energy efficiency by nearly a fifth and the trains will be able to accommodate over ten per cent more passengers.”

This would improve the utilization of existing infrastructure. But even without air-conditioning, compared to the early days of the tube, a trip in the London underground today could almost be called pleasant. The underground trains of the 19th century were pulled by steam locomotives and travelers from that time described conditions in the smoky tunnels as infernal. Flue gases escaped to the surface through ventilation shafts. It therefore seemed like witchcraft when the first electrically- operated, smoke-free trains appeared in 1890. London was a pioneer when it came to infrastructure back then.

World’s Largest Wind Park. Now the city, and its current mayor, Boris Johnson, plan to do nothing less than reclaim this role. As in the past, electricity might hold the key to creating a cleaner and more efficient city. The world’s biggest offshore wind park is now being built off the coast of southern England, and Siemens engineers are working with UK Power Networks on a smart grid for London that will be capable of delivering renewable energy from wind farms and from solar panels across the city and integrating these sources with the national grid.

In addition, more and more electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles can now be seen on the streets of London. The new age of electricity has begun and London is leading the way forward for many other big cities interested in generating and distributing energy more efficiently while also reducing demand.

Power is increasingly being produced in the UK without CO₂ emissions. What’s missing in the narrow streets of London but is available in abundance on the high seas are strong breezes. Offshore wind farms are already harvesting this natural energy in the UK. Gunfleet Sands, for example, a wind power facility located seven kilometers southeast of Essex, went into operation in August 2009. Some 48 Siemens wind turbines, each with a capacity of 3.6 megawatts (MW), are producing enough electricity there to supply 120,000 households. Siemens is also supplying 175 turbines to the London Array Offshore Wind Farm, located in the outer Thames estuary. Once construction is complete at the end of 2012, the 630 MW facility will become the largest offshore wind farm in the world. A second phase could increase the facility’s capacity to one gigawatt — enough to supply electricity to the equivalent of around 750,000 London households.

Siemens is also handling the advanced grid connections that will bring this energy on shore. The intelligent transport and efficient distribution of electricity in high demand areas — especially cities — is becoming more and more important especially as the production of energy from renewable sources can fluctuate sharply. In the case of wind power, supply depends on the strength of the wind. That’s why it’s crucial to have buffers. These can take the form of batteries in electric vehicles or buildings that flexibly regulate their electricity consumption through load shifting (see Pictures of the Future, Spring 2011, Automation's Ground floor Opportunity).

The Siemens Center for Urban Sustainability in East London will itself become such a buffer when it opens in the summer of 2012 as an exhibition, conference, and office complex (see Pictures of the Future, Spring 2011, Top Efficiency in the Docklands). “Although the building will meet the highest standards in terms of energy efficiency, it will also be one of the biggest electric loads in East London,” says Gareth Lewis from Siemens Energy. “This will present a challenge in terms of grid connection, but it will also offer an opportunity because it will enable effective testing of load behavior in a smart grid.”

Smart Grid for London. Lewis’ team is now planning a smart grid for a large portion of London in cooperation with UK Power Networks, a distribution grid operator. “Siemens will build a system for updating grid status and load data every hour,” Lewis explains. “Where peak loads can be predicted, the system can ask the Siemens Center to cut back consumption on the following day. For example in the summer months the building could cool itself off at night, reducing the need to use the air conditioning system during the peak period of the following day.” Electric vehicles could provide an effective buffer in the future — by storing electricity. Their batteries could do this when demand for energy is low — for example, during the night — and then supply electricity back into the grid when demand increases.

In May 2011, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, launched “Source London,” a network of publically-accessible charge points. The network allows owners of electric vehicles to charge their cars at locations across the city for 100 pounds per year. Source London is planning to install a total of 1,300 charging stations by 2013. The charge points are expected to help reduce “range anxiety” by reassuring electric vehicle drivers that they can recharge while out and about.

Siemens is working to ensure that Source London functions smoothly. The company supplies the back office services and information technology to provide customers with aroundtheclock services for account management, access to the charging network, data processing, billing and payment.

Although it’s becoming clear that small electric cars will rule the streets of the future clean vehicles do not make congestion go away. After all, they require more space per passenger than buses or trains. Major cities like London will therefore have to expand their public transport networks in order to prevent gridlock. The tube is already stretched to the limits of its capacity during rush hours, so it’s also important to develop alternatives to the underground.

Silent Trip. Ray Parcell is checking his brandnew double-decker at a bus garage in London. All the nuts are tight, all the lamps lit, and there’s not a scratch to be seen on the red paint. The bus run can begin. Parcell climbs behind the wheel and pulls a non-descript lever — the main power switch for the hybrid motor. Shortly after that, the diesel engine switches on for a brief moment, but only to show that it’s working properly. The bus eases silently out of the garage, its diesel engine off at this low speed. Parcell says that many passengers ask about his strangely quiet vehicle that doesn’t rattle or even need a combustion engine for long stretches. He tells them that a batterypowered drive system does all the work. There’s no witchcraft here. “I’ve been a bus driver for 17 years,” he proudly says, “but hybrid buses are the best buses I’ve ever driven.”

Parcell’s route takes him past the Bank of England and St. Paul’s Cathedral on the way to Waterloo, one of the busiest train stations in England. “This route shows Londoners and visitors to the city the future of our bus fleet,” says Parcell. “We symbolize the transport systems of tomorrow. Hybrid buses consume up to one-third less diesel fuel than conventional buses.”

From Rails to Revitalized Neighborhoods. It’s not just buses that are taking the strain off the capital city’s Underground, however; so too are the light surface rail lines. The trains on these lines travel to and from the center, largely on historical tracks built on bricked archways that form a trademark backdrop in many districts of the city. One of these routes is Thameslink, which runs north to south through London. Here, new stations are being built and the route is being upgraded to accommodate a dramatic increase in capacity to as many as 24 trains per hour. Plans also call for new and longer trains to enter service.

Siemens has been selected as the preferred supplier for 1,200 train cars, the building of two new depots and for ongoing maintenance. This combination delivers overall lower project lifetime costs, a very important factor in tough economic times when cities face significant budget constraints.

A large number of businesses have sprouted up underneath the archways that line many of the elevated routes. London’s high rents make every square meter of space extremely valuable, which is why small shops, bars, and restaurants have opened up under the tracks. “This is typical for London; the city keeps getting denser,” says Mark Brearley from Design for London, a small group of creative planners who draw up development ideas for the mayor. “This trend has led to the construction of taller buildings, and to an increasing number of people occupying the same space,” he adds.

But this density is reaching its limits in some places, which is clear from the cheerful grumblings of Brearley’s colleagues, typical Londoners, who often complain about the overcrowded and hot tube trains that they have to squeeze into every morning.

New Lease on Life for Brixton. Dougald Hine doesn’t have to worry about that. A freelance consultant, Hine doesn’t take the train until rush hour is over. The small firm he runs, which is called Space Makers Agency, specializes in improving urban districts at a reasonable cost. In 2010, Hine brought new life to Brixton Market in South London by convincing the owner of an historic market hall to allow concerts and artistic performances to be staged there. Empty shops quickly filled up with tenants, and even tourists started to come by.

“You constantly stumble on small, empty spaces in a city this size,” says Hine as he takes a sip of coffee in the huge hall of St. Pancras station. “These spaces — or ‘pockets,’ as I call them — also include the archways below the elevated train lines. A city that continually reinvents itself like London will automatically fill these spaces. I’ve also noticed that these projects are particularly successful in locations where infrastructure is already in place, such as the areas around the tube stations.” Hine takes a last sip of coffee; he has to get moving because he needs to catch a Eurostar train to the Belgian capital Brussels on a route that will feature high-speed trains from Siemens beginning in 2014.

Ray Parcell’s working day is also coming to an end. After a two-hour stint, he steers his hybrid bus back into the garage and hands it over to the next driver. More of these energy-saving vehicles are set to enter London’s bus lanes over the next few years, as the contracts handed out for many new routes stipulate the exclusive use of hybrid buses. Many of them use Siemens technology. Along with other electrically-powered vehicles such as trains and small electric cars, these buses are the cleanest way to get around the city. They apparently also attract famous people.

Parcell mentions that he once had an actor from the Harry Potter films on his bus. He’s convinced that the celebrity was so enchanted by the hybrid bus that he now prefers it to a flying broomstick.