Methodology for the Estimation of Electrical Power Consumed by Locomotives on Undocumented Railroad Tracks

Miguel Angel Rodriguez-Cabal, Diego Alejandro Herrera-Jaramillo, Juan David Bastidas-Rodriguez, Juan Pablo Villegas-Ceballos and Kevin Smit Montes-Villa
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Miguel Angel Rodriguez-Cabal: Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Mecatrónica y Electromecánica, Instituto Tecnologico Metropolitano, Medellín 050036, Colombia
Diego Alejandro Herrera-Jaramillo: Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Electrónica y Telecomunicaciones, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Medellín 050036, Colombia
Juan David Bastidas-Rodriguez: Facultad de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Manizales 170001, Colombia
Juan Pablo Villegas-Ceballos: Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Electrónica y Telecomunicaciones, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Medellín 050036, Colombia
Kevin Smit Montes-Villa: Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Electrónica y Telecomunicaciones, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Medellín 050036, Colombia

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-23

Abstract: The energy consumption estimation of a locomotive for a particular route is important for the selection of a locomotive technology, the improvement of the energy management system, the evaluation of the locomotive’s potential energy generation, among others. The methodologies reported in the literature usually assume that the information of the railway track is available; however, in some cases, the track information is incomplete, not available, or the route is still in a planning stage. Therefore, this paper proposes a methodology to estimate the energy consumption and the potential energy generation of a locomotive when the railway track information is not available or incomplete. The methodology begins by extracting the main technical information of the locomotive to be analyzed. Then, the route is traced on Google Earth with steps of 100 m and the obtained information is processed to generate the longitude, latitude, elevation, and distance of the points along the route. From such information, it is possible to generate the slope and curvature profiles, while the speed profile can be obtained from the track operator or the regulations of a specific country. With that information, it is possible to estimate the equivalent power of the locomotive at each point of the route to finally calculate the consumed energy. The proposed methodology is validated with two case studies. The first one compares the results with a methodology available in the literature for the same route and locomotive, while the second case shows the applicability of the proposed methodology for a route without information.

Keywords: locomotive; energy consumption; energy generation; estimation; railway track geometry (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: 2022
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