Management of Railway Power System Peaks with Demand-Side Resources: An Application to Periodic Timetables

Abstract

The objective of this paper involves the analysis of opportunities for the management of Railway Systems’ demand using Physical-Based models and aggregation tools well-known in “conventional” Power Systems to develop and enlarge the portfolio of Distributed Energy Resources. This proposed framework would also enable the use of railway flexible resources to their use in Power Systems. The work considers trends for the development of railway transportation units through the adoption of technologies that increase the flexibility of railway units. For instance, we mean a set of resources such as onboard generation in dual units, energy storage and generation in last-mile units, and auxiliary loads. Their inherent flexibility can contribute to increasing the management possibilities of the overall net demand. The proposed scenario under study faces some of the energy concerns of periodic timetables: fast and high-power peaks in demand unknown in conventional Power Systems. The simulation results present the achieved flexibility and its potential: a decrease in peak demand by around 20% and an increase in energy recovery by 10%, lagging new investments in infrastructure. These results improve the social and economic benefits of railway transportation on the overall energy and environmental objectives while reducing energy concerns due to the increasing use of railways and boosting the sustainability of the transportation system in the coming decades.