Regenerative braking in high speed railway applications: Analysis by different simulation tools

Technical investigations continuously evaluate the possibility to recover significant amount of braking energy. The application normally involve conventional tramways, characterized by several stops in short-range routes. However, this possibility is becoming more and more attractive also when high-speed trains are considered. In fact, braking energy can be recovered during entry in the station, and delivered later to other trains engaged in starting acceleration. In this work, authors propose an approach based on simplified models performed with object-oriented tools as Modelica or Matlab-Simscape, which easily introduce several advantages in modelling and simulation techniques. The approach has been applied to the preliminary evaluation of one energy storage system installed along a DC line, considering a high-speed train with distributed traction power as the new Italian ETR 1000.