Incidentally the regenerative system gives a very perfect control of the speed of the car on all gradients, owing to the regeneration which begins automatically when the motors start 'coasting.' It is a power-saver and a brake in one; and its efficacy as a means of control is so great that, if its incidental drawbacks could be avoided, it would be worth adopting for this purpose alone, both on electric tramways and on electric railways.
CHAPTER X
ACCUMULATOR ELECTRIC TRACTION.
THE ELECTRIC AUTOMOBILE
The use of the accumulator or storage battery in electric traction affords a very good example of how a means of propulsion may fail in one set of circumstances and contrive to succeed in another. Its history serves to remind us that the problem of cheap transport is really a group of problems, each one of which demands a particular solution.
The accumulator is a device for storing electrical energy in the form of chemical energy. Its action depends upon the effect of currents of electricity on lead plates in a bath of sulphuric acid. The passage of the current through the battery produces chemical changes which enable the battery to give out current when required. As the battery may remain 'charged' for several days, and may be discharged slowly or quickly, it provides a means of 'storing' electrical energy. In practice, and under favourable conditions, the efficiency of the storage battery is about 80 per cent. That is to say, there is a loss of about 20 per cent. in the process of conversion and re-conversion.
Fig. 8. A modern electric automobile.—The electric battery is placed under the front half of the car, and the motors drive the back axle through chains. (British Electric Automobile Co., Ltd.)
Great hopes were once entertained of accumulator traction on tramways. The storage battery offered a means of escape from all the difficulty and expense of carrying electric mains overhead or underground. By fitting each car with a storage battery, it could be made an independent self-contained locomotive, capable of running a certain number of miles until the battery was approaching exhaustion. By providing centres where the batteries could be re-charged—or, to save time, replaced by batteries previously charged—a continuous service could be maintained on a tramway system.
The advantages of accumulator traction, apart from the saving in first cost, are the absence of obstruction and danger from overhead wires, and of the risk of a general stoppage of the service when the current at the generating station fails from any accidental cause. When accumulators are used, the conversion of a horse tramway to an electric tramway becomes a very simple matter. All that is required is to erect a generating station and provide each car with a storage battery and electrical equipment. This equipment, it may be mentioned, is substantially the same as with ordinary electric cars. The current flows from the accumulator through the controller and the motors back to the accumulator.