Optimization of energy consumption in a railway traction system

Reduction in energy consumption in electrical railway traction systems has become a vital need. The effort spent in providing better quality services implies increasing speed and in turn an increase in energy consumption. Various techniques have been adopted to improve train performances, some regarding vehicle structure, some other related to motor improvements. In this paper a different way to reduce power absorption is presented. It is based on the studies of the traction diagram jointly with the absorption curves. The data are made available by an on-board monitoring system which measures all the electromechanical quantities of the train course and sends them through network connection to a control station. Starting from them it is possible to run an optimization procedure in order to get appropriate rules to drive in energy-efficient way the train. The procedure which get the optimized protocol with and the experimental data related to the train optimized protocol are presented.