With many of the country's nuclear power stations shut down, the railways needed to reduce their energy consumption. As well as cutting back off-peak services and slowing trains, it is time to make greater use of energy storage technologies and look at smarter train dispatching. Rather than simply cutting services, however, the railways need to be more innovative in the way that they optimise the use of the available power. One obvious way to reduce energy consumption is to regenerate power when trains are on a downhill gradient or would otherwise use friction brakes, and store it on or off the trains for reuse. At Sophia University a theoretical and quantitative energy saving model is developed. Given that train operations are based on the running profile of each station-tostation segment, the traction energy requirement can be calculated for any given running time by considering the gradient, speed restrictions and train performance. To minimise energy consumption overall within a given end-to-end journey time, it is necessary to increase the running time in sections where the energy draw is greatest and run faster on the lowenergy sections in order to equalise the energy draw. Of course, the actual amount of regenerated energy that can be captured may be affected by the receptivity of the overhead line. Energy recovery of this train is said to be outstanding on the level section with frequent stops, where JR (Japan Railway) East has recorded a 10% reduction of fuel consumption and 60% reduction in harmful exhaust gases and particulates from the diesel engine. Hybrid operation also means that the engine does not have to idle while the train is standing at stations, reducing noise levels by as much as 30 dB. After six years of operation, the Li-ion battery has not deteriorated as much as forecast, and the battery life is now expected to be longer than the eight years originally envisaged. Energy storage devices are still very expensive, and it is important to obtain the best possible performance for a given cost. Based on experience to date, the best way forward seems to be a combination of smaller devices. The cost, volume and mass of most systems means that it is not practical to install sufficient capacity on trains. In an ideal world, we could envisage co-operation between nearby trains, where energy regenerated by one train could be stored on another as well. But it would be difficult to manage the energy transfer remotely.


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    Title :

    Coping with a power crisis


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2013


    Size :

    5 Seiten, 7 Bilder



    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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