Application of Static Parking Recharge to Multi Modal Fuel Cell Trains

Both hybrid fuel cell trains and battery-operated ones are competing as sustainable solutions for a more sustainable service on not-electrified lines. Also for partially electrified lines, many operators are proposing the concept of Three-Modal Trains such as the recent Hitachi Blues adopted by Italian railways able to switch between a conventional current collection under an electrified line, a hybrid mode (sustained by an ICE) and a battery one. In this work authors investigate, starting from a near to realistic case study the possibility of adopting a three-modal approach for a hybrid fuel cell trains operating on a not electrified lines, by adding the possibility of a limited static recharge when the train is stopped in stations using a relatively modest amount of energy that can be generated or stored locally from sustainable sources. In this work some results referred to the simulation of some Italian not-electrified lines are shown, evidencing how proposed solution can improve train autonomy on not electrified lines that performance demanding due their altimetric profile.