Energy management and sizing of a hybrid locomotive

The French national railways company (SNCF) is involved in a new project called PLATHEE (energy- efficient and environmentally friendly train platform) which aims at investigating and testing energy- efficient and environmentally friendly traction systems. In particular, the design of a hybrid locomotive called LHyDIE has been started at 2005. This paper presents a new methodology for the hybrid electric vehicle design which exploits an energy management strategy based on a frequency approach. In particular, the design of the LHyDIE prototype and the energy management strategy implemented aboard are presented. The study mainly focuses on the battery and supercapacitor sizing taking account of the intrinsic energetic characteristics of these sources (i.e. energy and power densities, typical operating frequency) in the energy management strategy. The analysis of feasible configurations of the traction device determined in compliance with the battery stress, the system cost and the diesel oil consumption criteria and volume constraints is presented.