OPEUS D1.1 - Urban rail system energy requirements in Europe

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This document has been prepared in the framework of the EU co-funded OPEUS-project, which has been executed within Horizon 2020 - the EU Research and Innovation programme (2014-2020). OPEUS addresses topic S2R-OC-CCA-02-2015-Energy usage, generation and saving approaches (call identifier H2020-S2RJU-2015-01) as part of the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking first open call and stands for “Modelling and strategies for the assessment and OPtimisation of Energy USage aspects of rail innovation”, and is aiming to develop a simulation methodology and accompanying modelling tool to evaluate, improve and optimise the energy consumption of rail systems with a particular focus on in-vehicle innovation. This document describes the investigations into the social, political, economic, environmental and operational requirements related to the energy usage in urban rail systems with in-vehicle focus. The key factors that influence energy consumption are: Social: safety, security, comfort and convenience of urban rail, speed of the journeys, availability of the information about the journeys in real-time, transport accessibility; Political: emphasis on low-emission policy, shifting from private to public transport, and optimisation of energy usage; Economic: operator’s attention on increasing revenue of urban public transport and decreasing total cost of ownership; Environmental: global goals such as limiting the growth of the Earth’s average temperature and decreasing the level of transport emissions and local pollutants in cities; Operational: optimisation of energy usage in duty cycles, energy loss reduction in regenerative braking, introduction and usage of new technologies and materials for optimisation of energy usage. The conclusion part presents the scope of the stakeholders’ requirements influencing energy usage. Thus, outcomes of this document are expected to support the WP07 of the OPEUS project that summarises all the results providing a critique of the energy consumption outlook leading to a global vision of energy in the urban railways.