Development of a smart hybrid drive system with advanced logistics for railway applications.

Fuel Hydrogen cells become nowadays a major candidate to replace the diesel in powering the traction locomotives since they offer low emission of pollutant gases, high efficiency, and flexible modular structure without the need for installation of electrification infrastructure for railway networks. However, they cannot respond appropriately to the fast load transients due to their slow internal electrochemical and thermodynamic responses. Therefore, they shall be integrated with fast dynamics Li-ion battery cells to form a hybrid power source for traction systems. Accordingly, this paper presents a development of a new smart integrated power source of fuel hydrogen and Li-ion battery cells to supply dual three-phase machines for driving the trains in railway networks. The developed control management system is regulating the two power sources according to the train operational modes as well as the battery state of charge. In addition to that, dual three-phase machines offer several superiorities over the conventional three-phase machines such as lower harmonic distortion and power losses along with higher power density and fault tolerance. A designated railway line is nominated through selection criteria in this paper for the implementation of the new smart drive traction system in HIL platform using Typhoon HIL real time simulator. Moreover, an optimization analysis has been carried out to reduce the overall hydrogen consumption with the same journey time spent for a designated railway line using particle swarm optimization approach. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate a proof of concept for designing the hydrogen refueling station for such railways which are supplied by the new integrated power source of fuel hydrogen and Li-ion battery cells. The case study investigates the site selection, operational assessment, and equipment requirements. • Smart hybrid power source of fuel hydrogen and Li-ion battery cells is developed to supply dual three-phase machines for driving the trains. • The management system regulates the power sources according to the train operational modes as well as the battery state of charge. • The new drive traction system is validated in hardware-in-the loop platform using Typhoon real-time simulator. • Optimization analysis is also carried out to reduce the overall hydrogen consumption using particle swarm optimization approach. • Li-ion battery cells are optimized to act as an energy storage buffers by keeping their states of charge at start and end of the journey the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]