Market

Transportation is transitioning to cleaner energy, especially electric energy, but the Grid is unprepared and cannot even provide for electric automobiles. Most sectors are evolving sporadically and predictable rates of demand are impossible.

Freight Rail in North America is different.

Class 1 Railroads (of which there are only 6, soon to be 5) consume 3.2B gallons of diesel* annually. With this they produce 132GWh daily off-grid at an annual expense between $8-12B depending on the cost of diesel.

BNSF        38%
UP             30%
NS             12%
CSX           12%
CN               4%
CPKC          4%


*Diesel is a volatile commodity upon which Freight Rail is currently 100% dependent. “The most recent large-scale diesel refinery built in North America was the Marathon facility in Garyville, Louisiana, which became operational in 1977”(Google AI). If the newest is almost 50 years old and a new facility would take more than a decade, possibly 2 to come on-line; one must consider the risk of a Cat 5 hurricane in the Gulf Coast or terrorist drone forcing competition for global supplies and prices higher than current European levels.