Innovative concept and tools for smart grid applied to railway transportation – CONIFER

It is expected to have a growth of the rail traffic in the coming years which would face a growing energy consumption connected to: the big socio-economical development expected indicates the increasing fourfold of the travellers’ demand on the horizon of 2030. Also, as far as the goods transportation is concerned, the main lines established by the “Grenelle de l’environnement” law, foresee a development of all rail freeway with less than 500 000 truck per year carried by rail.
This context forces all rail freeway and energy actors to search for technical solutions in order to give an answer to this future transport demand in mastering energy consumption and billing. For this reason, a scientific and technological breakthrough within electrical rail system is essential. It becomes possible through the incorporation of innovative devices for storing energy, new means of renewable and relocated production, and an energetic optimisation of the network architecture. Thus, research, just like CONIFER project, must be made all enquiries in the development of smart grid theme.
Such a transformation of the rail network needs the preliminary developing of designing and analysis tools in order to permit modelling future smart grid.
Also, the industrial research project CONIFER (Innovative concept and tools for smart grid applied to railway transportation), proposes to anticipate the production evolution and the distribution of electrical energy in the rail field working on tools at two stages.
The first stage of study is about the proposal of dimensioning space for the setting up of permanent electric rail traction – IFTE (fixing of locations, electric bases and catenaries by the road). The future hybrid IFTE will fit delocalised productive sources and the storing system into the complementary characteristics which will allow the highly valued of the breakthrough within rail energy recovery. CONIFER will also suggest to use a tool of optimal results for the future hybrid IFTE taking into account not only all constraints linked to the sub-station and its employment but also constraints linked to reliability and good complementary of all elements considered. In a word, the future hybrid IFTE combined with an intelligent management of energy, will allow having a new element at disposal for the creation of future electric rail networks more efficient in terms of energy.
The second stage of study, the CONIFER project concerns the dimensioning of future intelligent electric rail network in an overall approach. In order to simplify, the given network will be a reduced one able to form up a railway. In order to suggest an overall optimal solution, the approach will lean on a systemic vision of the network taken into account. This future alimentation electric railway network system needs the conversion elements between the electric transportation network and the railway alimentation network, the hybrid IFTE previously dimensioned, the catenaries and trains running on the railway. The smart characteristic of the network will be translated into a new architecture and a new management strategy of the production and the storing sources elaborated by the hybrid IFTE.
The setting-up and the using of these tools, the CONIFER project includes an applied research combining the creating and modelling part with an experimental work through some architectural platforms and a restraint layout.