Configure methodology of on-board super-capacitor array for recycling regenerative braking energy of URT vehicles

On-board energy storage system (ESS) is an important technical solution of energy-savings in urban rail transit (URT). On-board Energy storage array configure is a key issue. In this paper, the limitations of the capacity constrained configure method (C-Method), which is mainly adopted for configuring on-board Super-capacitor array (OSA), is studied firstly. A case study shows that the C-Method according to capacity match only would cause part of absorbed braking energy to be wasted. Thus configuring OSA for URT vehicles braking energy recovery should consider both power and capacity constraints. Considering the power and capacity constraints, a demanded mathematical model is established, then a power and capacity constrained configure method (P&C-Method) and configure procedure are proposed in the study. Example and simulation results based on a project parameters show that the OSA with the proposed P&C-Method can realize effective recovery of whole absorbed braking energy and have high energy-savings/weight ratio.