Intelligent Railway Point Electric Heating Control System

The article gives overview on different methods of point heating systems. Their advantages and disadvantages are described. For point electric heating, an amount of consumed electric energy by station type is given. Existing methods of point heating control are reviewed and compared; their disadvantages are listed. As a proposed solution to the described problem, an intelligent point electric heating control system is proposed and described. Experiment of controlling point heating system by using pulse-width modulation method is set and its results are compared with theoretically calculated ones. Conclusions show that the approach of introducing pulse-width modulation allows to control point heating in more efficient way - using program code, control system will decide automatically when to switch the heating on and off.