Implementation of Battery Electric Multiple Unit on Railways: Pavia Case Study

European Commission has been approving strict environmental policies oriented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation sector is primarily involved in this switch, where several solutions are being designed and implemented to fulfil the targets. The use of Battery Electric Multiple Unit (BEMU) can help to achieve such scopes. Despite these rolling stocks are already in service in some European countries, in Italy this technology is not yet used. This work aims to implement BEMU in the Italian railway network. First, a technical feasibility study is carried out for the introduction of BEMU. Secondly, a power supply system is proposed to overcome technical criticality. A BEMU model is provided to compute the energy demand of the rolling stock. This allows to simulate the State Of Charge (SOC) profile during service, size the battery pack and quantify the energy to be charged at terminus station. Then the design of a power supply system that allows charging operations being compatible with technical limits imposed by TSI - ENE (Technical Specification of Interoperability for Energy Subsystems) is discussed. This system is focused on secondary lines joining Pavia railway node, as it results critical both for BEMU charging times and for traffic volumes.