UST: News

Direct current traction substation is designed for energy supply of SkyWay transport complex traction consumers. It can be delivered to feed traction consumers and other objects of transport infrastructure. Traction substation control envisages a possibility of control and remote transmission of all main state parameters for units of traction substation, current and load voltage via communication channels.

Traction substation provides short-circuit protection, as well as overload protection of traction consumers and feed lines (including potential protection at remote ground connections in direct current network).

Direct current substation includes:

charging device;

electric energy storage units (accumulator batteries);

distributing equipment of direct current (switches, disconnecting devices);

microprocessor controllers, measuring transducers and software.

Traction substation performs the function of energy supply for all drives of SkyWay transport complexes in EcoTechnoPark, particularly - of high-speed unibus-train, which will need electrical power of network feeding of approximately 1,000 kW during several minutes at the acceleration stage up to 500 km/h.

Traction substation allows to reduce the impact of traction load shocks to the feeding network and to maximally use the energy of vehicle regenerative braking. In this case, cost reduction for electric energy will make at least 30%.

Traction substation allows to feed drives of vehicles in the most optimal way - high-speed, urban and cargo, being at different lines of test tracks at the same time. Thus, energy supply can be optimized regardless of the test track length. Then, for example, it will allow to abandon transfer points at a long-distance cargo track. (Each transfer at the track will result in breakage of bulk stock, which requires installation of a processing plant at the end of the track to remove the formed dust, and significant unjustified appreciation of cargo - ore or coal.) In addition, it will allow, for example, to increase the distance between high-voltage substations at high-speed tracks by several times, considering that each substation of this kind costs about 20 mln USD.

Financial benefits are obvious:

It is not required to install a processing plant at the end of a long-distance cargo track to remove dust, formed while transportation, out of ore and coal; considering that the cost of a processing plant makes tens of millions USD. Cost reduction for electric energy, in this case, makes at least 30%, i.e. tens of thousands kilowatt of electric capacities at an average track with the length of several hundred kilometres.

Cost-cutting of electric power supply for high-speed tracks and their cheapening by 400-500 thousand USD/km.

Traction substation SkyWay will allow to save on construction of high-speed tracks up to 500 thousand USD/km (or up to 500 billion USD at each million kilometer of roads), cargo - up to 200 thousand USD/km. For example, railways in Australia are not electrified due to complexity and expensiveness of energy supply for cargo ore-transporting tracks, as the cost of electrification reaches 800-900 thousand USD/km.