FUNDRES

The challenge for the railway sector regarding energy is to increase the capacity while improving the energy consumption and limiting the environmental impacts, and to decrease the investment and exploitation costs, while maintaining safety and service quality. It makes it necessary to rethink railway power supply under future requests, reflecting the status of different systems.

The project FUNDRES presents a deep thinking and related work to define the future of railway, based on a new unified Future UNified DC Railway Electrification System based on 9 kV DC, able to integrate the existing lines during the transition period. In the coming years, MVDC power grids will contribute to the deployment of renewable energies and the electrification of transport systems. Compared to classical AC electricity distribution networks, they are generally more energy efficient and facilitate the interconnection of sources, storage elements and loads. In 2018, a new 9 kV DC railway electrification system was presented as an opportunity for the railway sector. The ambitions of FUNDRES are to bring substantial improvements in the energy technology area and station for the future unified system based on 9 kV DC. The consortium composed of LAPLACE, EPFL, POLIMI and UIC develops several scenarios, validated by experimental demonstration at laboratory level. The digital twin offers the possibility to predict the behaviour and the impacts of the proposed unified electrical system based on 9 kV DC.

The project outputs will be used to deliver new integrated technology demonstrators and scientific progress for the project IN2STEMPO, and more largely for Shift2Rail, which will be implemented in the railway network.

Objectives

The main objectives of the FUNDRES project are to:

• Quantify the potential impact of the increase in voltage levels in DC railway electrification;
• Explore suitable power supply schemes and the impact of power electronics and energy storage technologies, as well as interactions with 3-phase utility grids in ancillary service markets;
• Deliver modelling tools to simulate all relevant scenarios and to implement Digital Twins, both at equipment level and system level;
• Set up a representative experimental demonstration to evaluate the performances of the future DC system, focusing on 9 kV DC as an example;
• Give recommendations for the new future unified DC railway power supply to the project’s advisory group, to the members of Shift2Rail’s Innovation Programme n°3, and to standardisation committees.