Development of a novel charging algorithm for on-board ESS in DC train through weight modification

Abstract

Owing to the reduction in the peak power of a DC railway subsystem, many studies on energy storage system (ESS) applications have received attention. Each application focuses on improving the efficiency and addressing regulation issues by utilizing the huge regenerative energy generated by braking-phase vehicles. The ESS applications are widely divided into installation on a vehicle or in a substation, depending on the target system characteristics. As the main purpose of the ESS application is to reduce the peak power of starting-phase vehicles, an optimized ESS utilization can be achieved by the operating at the highest peak power section. However, the weight of an entire vehicle, including those of the passengers, continuously changes during operation; thus, considering the total power consumption and the discharging point is difficult. As a contribution to the various storage device algorithms, this study deals with ESS on board vehicles and introduces an ESS operating plan for peak-power reduction by investigating the weight of a train on a real-time basis. This process is performed using a train-performance simulator, and the simulation accuracy can be increased because the weight in each phase can be adopted in the simulation.