Abstract
The paper presents a new, unconventional energy harvesting (EH) method for supplying low-power devices on electrified railway lines that utilises stray currents and the non-zero potential of the rails to the ground. The EH device gathers the energy and stores it in batteries. It could even work in extremely unfavourable weather conditions and could be easily placed in almost any location. The presented real-life data show that the average available power is less than 250 mW and the average useful power is about 100 mW. This is enough to supply ultra-low power microcontrollers, which only occasionally use energy-consuming modules to perform measurements or communicate. The disadvantage of the EH method is the introduction of resistance between the rail and the earth, which increases stray currents and could increase the electrochemical corrosion of the rail. To reduce the impact of this resistance, a method for balancing the flowing charge is proposed. After balancing, the average of the flowing current is zero and electrochemical corrosion should be reduced. The proposed charge balancing algorithms could reduce the unbalanced charge to nearly zero at the expense of energy gathering efficiency, which decreases by 20–40%.
Highlights
Modern railway infrastructure requires more and more complex safety, control, and supervision systems, including remote sensors, telemetry systems, and wireless sensor networks (WSN)
The highest voltages occur in the area in which the current is consumed by the electric multiple unit (EMU) or electric locomotive, and they become high during acceleration or regenerative braking
As the result of disabling of the energy harvesting for lowest voltage values (0 < VIN < VTH ) the unbalance of the charge flowing between the rail and the earth is reduced from 27.5% to 1.87%
Summary
Modern railway infrastructure requires more and more complex safety, control, and supervision systems (peripheral systems), including remote sensors, telemetry systems, and wireless sensor networks (WSN) All these devices need a continuous, reliable, and maintenance-free power supply and they are usually low power devices. The aforementioned devices are frequently powered by the off-grid installation of renewable energy sources This solution allows for the generation of enough energy for the ongoing requirements of the supplied system as well as storage of the excess energy in batteries for use at night or in unfavourable weather conditions [1,2]. It is possible to use non-rechargeable batteries as a supply, such devices require frequent servicing In these cases, the usage of some kind of energy harvesting could be beneficial. 3 kV DC traction networks, but it is possible under certain conditions to use it with other networks
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