Energy Consumption Study of Rapid Charging of Catenary Free Light Rail Transit

Abstract

This paper presents the energy consumption study of catenary free light rail transit system using an on-board battery system as a main motive power source. This paper proposes a case study of energy consumption which has 3 sub-cases of charging points: i) charging at every stop, ii) charging at every 5 stops and charging once after one round trip. The charge is conducted by a rapid charge at the charging stop with dwell time of 20 seconds. By using the route of Korat Light Rail Transit Green Line project in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand that are 20 passenger stops and a total round-trip distance of 22 km. The total energy consumption for one round trip of the route is 136.866 kWh. For the different 3 cases, the different charging point effect to energy consumption, battery size and the cost of the battery. The longer the distance between the two consecutive charging points, the larger the kWh capacity of the on-board battery for the vehicle.