Determination of the component sizes and analysis of the operational cost of PEM Fuel Cell-Battery Hybrid Energy System to Retrofit the Diesel Locomotives of Indian Railway

Abstract

The paper presents a multi-objective design optimization approach for determination of the component sizes of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)-battery hybrid energy system (HES) to substitute the three diesel locomotive classes operating in Indian railways. The objective functions of optimization are the minimization of the total cost of the HES and the fuel consumption. An energy management strategy is used for the load distribution between the two energy sources and is implemented as the sub-routine in the optimization algorithm. For simulation study, the real-world drive cycle of a local passenger train functional in Assam, India is considered. Three different Pareto fronts containing the different sets of PEMFC and battery sizes are obtained for the three locomotives. Lastly, a comparison between the diesel locomotives and the proposed HES is carried out in terms of their operational cost to examine the advantages of the proposed HES.