REDUCTION OF ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE'S ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY SCALABLE TRACTIVE POWER CONTROL

Abstract

At the beginning of the paper, the analysis of energy efficiency indicators for freight electric locomotive with asynchronous traction drive feeding from AC network under various operating conditions including when working with trains of various masses is made. The movement on different railway sections is considered. The graphs of locomotive’s speed, traction force, consumed power, and power for the traction obtained by on-board recorder are shown. In addition, the dependence of the locomotive's energy efficiency from the degree of using of its available traction capacity has been experimentally obtained, the greater is the using of the locomotive’s capacity, the greater will be its efficiency. On the basis of the performed analysis of energy efficiency indicators for various operating conditions, the proposals for their improvement are formulated. The algorithm ensuring the stabilization of the instantaneous value of efficiency at partial load to its nominal level at full load is presented. This algorithm is the implementation of Scalable Power Control Technology with respect to the problem of reducing electricity consumption for electric locomotive traction. The direct the experimental confirmation of energy consumption reduction for freight electric locomotive due to the application of our proposals (under the same operating conditions of the locomotive) is obtained.

Keywords

• electric locomotive
• energy efficiency
• scalable tractive power control
• multi-engine
• electrical traction drive
• partial