Optimal Cooperative Eco-Driving of Multitrain With TLET Comprehensive System

Aiming to minimize the total electricity usage in realistic operation of urban rail transit (URT) trains, this article establishes the coupled model for the train–line–electric network–timetable (TLET) comprehensive system and proposes a multitrain cooperative eco-driving method to achieve the system energy optimal. The dynamic power flow within the dc railway system with multiple trains is analyzed by modeling the traction power supply system (TPSS), and an improved power flow calculation (PFC) method is proposed to calculate the dynamic power flow distribution. To achieve the total substation energy minimization, a space–time–speed (STS) 3-D network is presented to transform continuous train motion process into discrete states on space–speed plane, and a multiple individuals dynamic programming (MIDP) algorithm is thoroughly developed to cooperatively optimize the multitrain trajectories along the time horizon, with which the optimal speed profiles and timetables of each train can be obtained simultaneously. Moreover, a computationally efficient heuristic algorithm together with a train-to-train (T2T) communication policy is developed as a comparative study. Numerical experiment with field data from Guangzhou Metro Line 8 is implemented, to illustrate the energy-saving performance of the proposed methods.

I. Introduction

Advanced energy-saving technologies are promising means to realize the sustainable development of the urban rail transit (URT) system, which consumes enormous energy consumption in daily operations. In 2021, the total electricity of the URT in China was with a year-on-year increase of 23.6% [1]. Optimizing train operations is regarded as an efficient approach to reduce the electricity consumption, which requires low capital investment.