Technical Report No.1307

No. 1307

Application technologies of energy storage devices to railway vehicle traction.

Investigating R&D Committee on application technologies of energy storage devices to railway vehicle traction

Keyword :

Energy saving, load leveling, energy storage devices, regenerative brake

Electrical railway systems are the most energy efficient transportation system thanks to their lower running resistance and much recovered kinetic energy by the regenerative brake system. However the peak of the feeding power by railway substations is high and the regenerative brake energy is lost due to the absence of the load. In addition, diesel engine powered railway vehicles cannot recover the kinetic energy in principle because the internal combustion engines can convert fossil fuel energy to kinetic energy unidirectionally. To cope with these problems with the peaky power feature and the much energy consumption, there are several experimental cases including some cases of practical use to apply energy storage devices to railway vehicles traction system. The technical trends motivate to organize a technical investigation committee aiming at discussing to analyze the application technologies of the energy storage system systematically and intensively by the engineers and researchers in the technical field. This report is based on their discussion and covers both the current technologies and the perspectives of the related technologies in near future. Especially, the relation between the performance of the energy storage systems and their objects are discussed mainly in this report.