Railway Power Supply Investment Decisions Considering the Voltage Drops - Assuming the Future Traffic to Be Known

Transports on rail are increasing and major railway infrastructure investments are expected. An important part of this infrastructure is the railway power supply system. The future railway power demands are naturally not known for certain. The more distant the uncertain future is, the greater the number of scenarios that have to be considered. Large numbers of scenarios make time demanding simulations unattractive. Therefore a fast approximator that uses aggregated railway power supply system information has been developed. In particular the approximator studies the impacts of voltage drops on the traffic flow. The weaker the power system and the heavier the traffic, the greater the voltage drops. And the greater the voltage drops, the more limited the maximal attainable tractive force on the locomotives. That approximator is in this paper used as a constraint in the embryo of a railway power supply system investment planning program, where investment decisions are assumed to be realized immediately, and there is no preexisting power supply system to consider. The traffic forecasts are in this first approach assumed to be perfect. This stepwise creation of the planning program makes evaluating it easier. The basic investment planning model presented here constitutes the foundation for further improvements.