Originally Posted by Roody
What is the energy used per passenger mile?
Well let's see. If we assume that the train is actually consuming all 25,000 horsepower, then we can calculate:
25,000 hp = .74*25,000 kW = 18500 kW = 18,500,000 joules/second
356 miles/hour = 356 miles/hour * (1 hour / 3600 seconds) = .1 miles/second
(18,500,000 joules/second) / (.1 miles/second) = 185 megajoules/mile
Assuming 70 passengers per car (the exact configuration isn't listed here yet
http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/formations.html#rec , but 70 seems typical for a double decker tgv car) and three cars we have 210 passengers total, which finally gives us:
185/210 mJ/mile*passenger = .88 megajoules/miles*passenger
Which is approximately 880 BTU/passenger-mile
Seems too low. I'm thinking:
1. We need to account for the additional energy needed to get up to speed.
2. It probably wouldn't have gotten to top speed if it were full of passengers.
3. They did say "more than 25,000 horsepower", so using 25,000 is an underestimate.