Abstract
Tramway systems are more and more diffused today, to reduce pollution and greenhouse emissions. However, their electrical feeding substations can have significant margin for improvement. Therefore, it is questionable which kind of changes can be introduced, by changing their main features. First of all, transformer technology can be enhanced, by moving from the standard transformer to the amorphous metal one; thus, guaranteeing a significant reduction in losses. Then, by installing one dedicated storage systems for each substation. This solution can help to increase the energy efficiency; thus, recovering the tram braking energy and reducing the delivered energy from the grid, and also the reliability of the system; thus, guarantee different levels of services, in the case of failure of a feeding substation. This paper investigates in a systematic approach the two proposed solutions. In particular an amorphous metal transformer has been properly designed, and performance compared to the standard one. Then, evaluation of distributed storage installation was performed, and the aspects of reliability for these systems evaluated. Results have shown the general feasibility of the proposed solutions, showing a significant energy saving with respect to the conventional ones.
Highlights
Tramway systems are more and more diffused today, in order to limit environmental impact from transportation field
If non-reversible feeding substations equipped with storage are considered, the authors already did the calculation of the energy saving derived from introduction of some stationary storage systems on an existing tramway, through a simulation tool developed in Modelica language, which include the electrical network, the vehicles, and the driver [6]
When the number of storage systems equals the number of the feeding substations (ESSs), it is possible to reduce the sizing of the transformer, e.g., up to half of the original power, since the extra-power needed can be delivered by the storage systems
Summary
Tramway systems are more and more diffused today, in order to limit environmental impact from transportation field. If non-reversible feeding substations equipped with storage are considered, the authors already did the calculation of the energy saving derived from introduction of some stationary storage systems on an existing tramway, through a simulation tool developed in Modelica language, which include the electrical network, the vehicles, and the driver [6]. It can be of interest to analyze if the number of installed storages can further increase with respect to what already studied, up to the installation of one storage for each electrical feeding substation (ESS), in order to increase the system reliability and to guarantee adequate levels of redundancy in the case of failure of one or more electrical feeding substations (ESSs) When they are installed on each substation, they can reduce the size of the transformers, since they are able to sustain peaks of power requested by the different trains on track. This paper shows how to systematically improve the electrical feeding substations (ESSs) from the point of view of the electrical energy utilization, moving from the improvement of the transformer technology and of the solutions regarding stationary storage systems, within a cost-effectiveness perspective
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