An overview on braking energy regeneration technologies in Chinese urban railway transportation

In order to prevent the failure of regeneration and reduce energy consumption, making full use of regenerative energy has been widely recognized as an important issue by Chinese urban railway transportation community. This paper provides an overview on the technologies of regenerative energy braking in China. It is first explained that why the ground resistor is popular in China in order to prevent the failure of regeneration. Alternative technology using regenerative inverter and ground supercapacitor is then introduced including main circuit, working mechanism and existing problems. Next, the simulation, status quo and experimental results of the ground supercapacitor energy storage system are discussed in detail for a 200kW prototype system developed in China. Finally, future improvements are mentioned for Chinese braking energy regeneration technology.