An energy-efficient adjustment approach in subway systems

The delays of trains have serious impact on the efficiency of operation, and on the passenger satisfaction which reduces the quality of service. The quality of service needs to be enhanced and the energy saving is drawing more and more attentions. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient adjustment approach to mitigate the delays of trains, and to decrease energy consumption, simultaneously. To reduce energy consumption, energy-efficient operation strategies are considered. We seek the best coasting point to decrease the tractive energy. And we optimize the overlapping time of accelerating phase and braking phase for contiguous trains to increase the utilization of regenerative braking energy. Finally, the simulation is presented to show the proposed approach. We illustrate that the current adjustment approach could result in unnecessary energy consumption. By contrast, our approach can observably mitigate the delays of trains, and provide better energy-efficient effect.