Power Sharing and Storage-Based Regenerative Braking Energy Utilization for Sectioning Post in Electrified Railways

It is energy-efficient and grid-friendly to utilize regenerative braking energy (RBE) in electrified railways. However, considering the segmented structure of the railway power system, it is challenging to utilize the RBE between adjacent traction substations (TSSs). To this end, an RBE utilization method involving power sharing and storage is proposed in this paper. The proposed method is implemented on a sectioning post-energy storage system (SPESS) to coordinate RBE utilization between adjacent TSSs. To provide real-time power management and control for the SPESS, a centralized power flow control strategy is developed. Specifically, a two-stage power dispatch algorithm-based power management strategy (PMS) is designed in the central controller. A nonlinear optimization function is formulated in the PMS to determine the active power commands to maximize the RBE utilization and shave the power demand. It also calculates the reactive power commands based on residual capacity to stabilize the catenary voltage. The power flow control is implemented in the local controllers as per the power commands from the central controller. The feasibility of the proposed method is verified through hardware-in-the-loop experiments. The techno-economic superiority of the proposed method over literature methods is validated based on field load data-based comparison analysis.