VSC-Based MVDC Railway Electrification System

This paper proposes a new railway electrification system in which the voltage-source converter (VSC) becomes the basic building block. This will allow existing railways, comprising several ac and dc subsystems, to be transformed into simpler medium-voltage dc (MVDC) multiterminal power systems feeding mobile loads. Moreover, the VSC-based unified scheme will substantially facilitate the connectivity among otherwise heterogeneous railway systems, while the integration of distributed generation and storage is achieved in a straightforward fashion. In addition to the general MVDC architecture, details are provided about the dc catenary layout, dual-voltage locomotive configurations, and dc-dc links between urban and long-distance railways. The need for a supervisory control system, and its role in coordinating local VSC controllers, so that the resulting power flows are optimized while the catenary voltage is kept within limits, are discussed. The proposed railway electrification paradigm is compared with the standard 25-kV, ac electrification system by means of a real case study.

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