Septa to Unveil New Energy Saving Device on Market-Frankford Line

• Susan Phillips
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

Subway trains in Philadelphia can now capture and store energy while braking, much like some hybrid and electric cars do.  The Market-Frankford line, which runs from Upper Darby, through West Philadelphia, center city, and then up into the Northeast, has begun to reuse breaking energy. A state grant of $900,000 helped launch the project with the collaboration of Viridity Energy, a company that helps large energy consumers reduce their usage.
Septa hopes this project will not only save on energy costs, but also create revenue for the mass transit organization by selling excess capacity back to the grid.  Septa has come under fire recently from a lawmaker in Harrisburg who has threatened to cut state funding unless the agency converts some of its fleet to compressed natural gas.
 

Editor's Picks