Comparative Study of PWM Method for Optimal Energy Control of Railway Traction Motor

Railway system, especially the electrical railway, is a more efficient transportation system compared to other modes of transportation. However, it consumes a lot of energy for operation. Traction system consumes a lot of portion of energy in the railway system. Pulse Wide Modulation (PWM) method has an important role in traction motor drive. There are a lot of types of PWM with different characteristic. This paper study the applications of three well know PWM method namely Hysteresis band-PWM (HPWM), Sinusoidal-PWM (SPWM), and Space Vector - PWM (SVPWM) in railway system in correlation with energy consumption. The simulation is carried out by different schemes. The result shows that SVPWM has lower energy consumption compare with HPWM and SPWM by up to 15 % and 11% respectively.