Development of strategies for reducing traction energy consumption by electric rolling stock

Abstract

The paper considers a method of increasing the energy efficiency of the traction power consumption during operation of a non-autonomous electric rolling stock equipped with an onboard energy storage. The idea is to use the onboard energy storage of the electric braking as an additional power source for the traction electric drive in the process of vehicle acceleration and to coordinate its work with the power supply system. This not only ensures the independence of the processes of electric power consumption and kinetic energy recovery by the traction equipment, but also reduces losses in the elements of traction and external power supply systems. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method, we simulated the operation of a metro train with asynchronous traction electric drive in combination with the proposed system. The results obtained, in this case, demonstrated a reduction of energy losses in the elements of the traction power supply system during the electric train acceleration by 45 % compared with the losses when using a regular traction drive system. Attention is paid to the factors and their characteristics that exert significant influence on the traction and electric braking processes.