EMI - And we think we have problems

[Barry2013]

A report in today's Times.
"A fleet of hybrid electro-diesel trains built for the east coast mainline will have to run on diesel alone on some tracks because they intefrere with the signals." Cause electro magnetic interference to the oldest part of the line.
Built by Hitachi and obviously a major safety problem which has to be solved.

 

[Atmasphere]

Yikes!

You might not want to ride in that train if you have a pacemaker...

 

[Barry2013]

Hadn't thought about pacemakers!
Even more scary.

 

[Cyclotronguy]

No surprise there.

When I first started putting VFD's on motor drives (back in the "dark-ages").... the industry had a sudden spate of ball bearings dying prematurely.

Turns out there was induced circulating currents in the bearings from the switchmode power supplies. Before the bearing makers came up with advanced ceramic bearings and fancy wiring....... the best we could do was add conductive brushes to moving parts......

You don't know ugly till a million gallon a day waste water treatment plant goes down and the vendor says you have a 60 week lead on new gearbox...... and everyone knows it's your electronics package that did the damage