Gathering Energy of the Stray Currents in Electrified Railways Environment for Power Supply

Grzegorz Wieczorek, Krzysztof Bernacki, Zbigniew Rymarski and Wojciech Oliwa
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Grzegorz Wieczorek: Department of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Microelectronics, Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Krzysztof Bernacki: Department of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Microelectronics, Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Zbigniew Rymarski: Department of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Microelectronics, Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Wojciech Oliwa: Department of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Microelectronics, Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-19

Abstract: The paper presents a new, unconventional energy harvesting (EH) method for supplying low-power devices on electrified railway lines that utilises stray currents and the non-zero potential of the rails to the ground. The EH device gathers the energy and stores it in batteries. It could even work in extremely unfavourable weather conditions and could be easily placed in almost any location. The presented real-life data show that the average available power is less than 250 mW and the average useful power is about 100 mW. This is enough to supply ultra-low power microcontrollers, which only occasionally use energy-consuming modules to perform measurements or communicate. The disadvantage of the EH method is the introduction of resistance between the rail and the earth, which increases stray currents and could increase the electrochemical corrosion of the rail. To reduce the impact of this resistance, a method for balancing the flowing charge is proposed. After balancing, the average of the flowing current is zero and electrochemical corrosion should be reduced. The proposed charge balancing algorithms could reduce the unbalanced charge to nearly zero at the expense of energy gathering efficiency, which decreases by 20–40%.

Keywords: rails; rail potential; stray currents; energy harvesting; electrochemical corrosion; control algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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