A Novel energy management control of wayside Li-Ion capacitors-based energy storage for urban mass transit systems

The present paper deals with the energy management of stationary Li-Ion Capacitor energy storage (LC-ESS) applied in DC electrified mass transit systems. These transportation systems can benefit substantially from wayside energy storage devices for the recuperation of the kinetic energy during brakings and the limitation of supply currents during motoring. The proposed control evaluates analytically the LC-ESS reference current on the basis of the actual vehicles kinetic energies, taking properly into account the several efficiencies of the energy conversion chain. Some numerical simulations with respect to a case study and to realistic railway vehicles operations are presented, pointing out the potentiality of the tailored control technique. The results obtained show that the control is very effective and that the final choice of the storage size is a trade-off between energy saving and equipment cost.