Project description
Electrifying technology for future railway
The future of the railway sector is associated with significant changes in energy use. The trend is to increase capacity, improve on energy consumption, restrict environmental impact, and limit investment and operational costs while preserving the safety and quality of services. Soon, medium-voltage direct current (DC) power grids will support the development of renewable energies for the transport system. The EU-funded FUNDRES project proposes a challenging approach to the future of railways based on a new unified electrification system of 9 kvDC that can consolidate the existing lines during the period of transition. The project’s ambition is to significantly enhance energy technology for the future unified system.
Objective
The challenge for the railway sector regarding energy is to increase the capacity while improving the energy consumption and limiting the environmental impacts, and to decrease the investment and exploitation costs, while maintaining safety and service quality. It makes it necessary to rethink railway power supply under future requests, reflecting the status of different systems.
The project FUNDRES presents a deep thinking and related work to define the future of railway, based on new unified Future UNified Dc Railway Electrification System based on 9 kvDC, able to integrate the existing lines during transition period. In the coming years, MVDC power grids will contribute to the deployment of renewable energies and the electrification of transport systems. Compared to classical AC electricity distribution networks, they are generally more energy efficient and facilitate the interconnection of sources, storage elements and loads. In 2018, a new 9 kV DC railway electrification system is presented as an opportunity for railway sector. The ambitions of FUNDRES are to bring substantial improvements in the energy technology area and station for the future unified system based on 9 kVDC. The consortium composed by LAPLACE, EPFL, POLIMI and UIC will develop several scenarios, validated by experimental demonstration at the laboratory level (TRL4). The digital twin offers the possibility to predict the behaviour and the impacts of the proposed unified electrical system based on 9kvDC.
The project outputs will be used to deliver new integrated technology demonstrators and scientific progress for the project IN2STEMPO, and more largely for Shift2Rail, which will be implemented in the railway network.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
Shift2Rail-RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
31029 Toulouse Cedex 4
France