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Colas rail News
Our French agency RAMFER develops the "EcoStop"
The very first G2000 locomotive equipped with the “EcopStop” system rolled out on Monday, February 3rd, 2020 for our client ESIFER.RAMFER,
Transposed to the rail sector, this is a real innovation that is part of our positioning as a creator of sustainable mobility. In fact, the locomotives have diesel engines sized to be powerful enough to tow loads of up to several thousand tonnes. These locomotives make many stops and operate between 35% and 65% of the time in engine idle. During this idling speed, the machines consume between 10 and more than 60 liters per hour, an amount of fuel that is far from negligible.
The “EcoStop” logic / electronic system developed by RAMFER makes it possible to stop the main diesel engine during the parking or waiting phases of the locomotive, thus making significant savings in terms of diesel and participating in the preservation of the environment.
In addition, “EcoStop” is an intelligent and communicative solution. It generates and sends data about the state of the locomotive and the use of the device, which allow to know the fuel gain in liters per day, the total consumption of the machine, the number of stops issued by the EcoStop. It also provides the state of charge of the batteries, the coolant temperature, the air demand of the compressors and the braking information of the machine.
This technology has many advantages:
- Fuel savings of around 15%
- Reduction of CO2 emissions
- Reduction of noise pollution
- Reduced maintenance costs for diesel engines and other machine components (transmission, gearboxes, etc.)
The “EcoStop” system is currently available on Vossloh GS1206, GS1000 and G2000 locomotives and is being explored in other models. It can be installed on recent machines but also older models and is Multiple Unit compatible.
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