Optimal energy management of a battery-supercapacitor based light rail vehicle using genetic algorithms

In this paper an optimal energy management strategy (EMS) for a light rail vehicle with an onboard energy storage system combining battery (BT) and supercapacitor (SC) is presented. The optimal targets for the proposed EMS are obtained by an optimization process with multi-objective genetic algorithms (GA). The fitness functions are expressed in economic terms, and correspond to the costs related to the energy absorbed from the catenary as well as the BT and SC cycling cost. The case study selected is the tramway of Sevilla. The aim was to minimize the daily operating cost of the tramway taking into account the BT and SC degradation approach and fulfilling the performance of the tramway in the catenary-less zone. A sizing analysis is done taking as optimization variables the BT and SC sizing to evaluate the impact on the daily operating cost. A comparison between the optimal solutions and a base scenario is presented.