Abstract
The electrified railway systems have been spreading all over the world. In big cities, metro or light rail transit railway networks have been constructed extensively. Expansion of this enormous dynamic electric load has been created huge amount of stress on the power grid. Generally, the speed drives, power conversion equipment or frequency converters inject harmonic in to railways power supply system. These harmonics seriously disturbs other electrical systems or generate a high frequency electromagnetic fields in neighboring electrical equipment as well as traction network signaling system. However, new developments in power electronic converter enable efficient and flexible conditioning of electrical energy in the application of railway power system. Power electronics, already previously being a pioneer for progress of traction vehicles, brought forth an ultimate standardization of the traction power supply system. Today, the spectrum of power electronic converters application in the traction system spread in many areas including power electronics based traction transformers, auxiliary power supply systems, rectification, integration of regenerative braking, reactive power compensation and voltage regulation and traction motor controls. This paper reviews the applications of semiconductor based power electronic devices in electrified railway system and illustrates some major application areas.
Highlights
The history of power electronics extends nearly 120 years of age
The applications of power electronic converters started to spread in the railway industry in 1930 when the New York sub way installs a grid-controlled mercury arc rectifier with a capacity of 3 megawatt for the direct current (DC) drive [6]
Modern power compensator are working based on power electronics converters, which helps to improve power factor of the traction power supply system
Summary
The history of power electronics extends nearly 120 years of age. In 1901, the discovery of glass tube mercury arc rectifier by peter cooper Hewitt of the United States of America gave birth to power electronics [1]. The applications of power electronic converters started to spread in the railway industry in 1930 when the New York sub way installs a grid-controlled mercury arc rectifier with a capacity of 3 megawatt for the direct current (DC) drive [6]. Beginning from 1946 with the inventions of thyristor type devices the modern era of power electronics started [7]. Modern power compensator are working based on power electronics converters, which helps to improve power factor of the traction power supply system. They are a very important elements in modern flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS). The traction motor (AC or DC) drives certainly comprises the major area of power electronics applications. Today there is a trend to replace the conventional line frequency transformers by medium frequency transformers where high frequency signals are directly applied to the terminals of the transformer (traction transformer) as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4, which in turn decreases the overall magnetic volume of the transformer and leads to more compact power converter devices
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