Feasibility study of trains involvement in electric demand-response

Abstract

The electric grid is more and more under pressure. A blackout is possible. In Europe and particularly in France,
during cold period the consumption reaches a share of production capacity higher and higher every year.
Moreover, the increasing part of intermittent energy sources coupled with a drop of peak production sources
investments are nowadays impacting the electric grid stability. With electricity market liberalization and new
mechanisms, not only producers can be a part of electricity grid stability, consumers can. The most consuming
industries can act and participate in these mechanisms (demand-response). In France the first consumer is the
main French railway operator SNCF. Its presence all over France makes it relevant as a distributed-but-unique
service provider. In a societal point of view, SNCF, as a public industry, is legitimate to make efforts towards
electric grid stability avoiding home or region blackout due to unbalance between consumption and production.
SNCF yearly power consumption of 8 TWh is exposed in this paper, showing a distribution of 84% for traction,
14% for buildings and stations, and 2 % for rolling stock maintenance centres. Rolling stock involvement in
demand-response mechanism is meaningful. But reducing the power of a train may involve a delay at arrival that
is not acceptable for passengers. Many Driver Advisory Systems (DAS) on the market owe to reduce energy
consumption. The objective of this paper is to show the development of a new add-on in a DAS that will
optimize power reduction of trains during a balancing period and ensure the arrival time, while controlling the
energy consumed during the overall trip. A demand-response period is added in the optimisation tool to get
involved in electricity market mechanisms. A virtual test is done on high speed line “LN1” between Paris and
Lyon. Different scenarios are presented and show a flexibility potential between 3 to 7 MW during peak hour
involving 15 High Speed Trains (HST). The economic potential of this implication is finally detailed. On a
national basis, it represents a big share of electrical primary reserve and is also a matter of concern for network
operators and utilities.

Original document

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• https://zenodo.org/record/1456421 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

• http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1456421,

https://zenodo.org/record/1456421 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

• https://zenodo.org/record/1456421,

http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1456420 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

DOIS: 10.5281/zenodo.1456420 10.5281/zenodo.1456421