Improving energy efficiency for suburban railways: A two-stage scheduling optimization in a rail-EV smart hub

As the scale of suburban rail and electric vehicles (EVs) continues to expand with the revolution of electrification of transportation, park and ride (P&R) facilities are increasingly recognized as critical energy coupling points between suburban rail traction transformers and EV charging stations. However, flexible coordination of the energy distribution among the bidirectional power flow of multiple trains and EVs’ charging demand becomes an urgent issue. In this paper, we establish a rail-EV Smart Energy Hub (SEH) framework integrating trains, ultra-capacitors (UC), and battery-based EVs. An emendable two-stage optimization model is proposed, enabling railways to provide R2X (railway-to-anything) services. The first stage determines the optimal train trajectory and adjusts timetables to minimize the energy consumption of multiple trains. In the second stage, the charging strategy of the EV is coordinated with the charging/discharging scheme of the UC, which takes the train power flow determined in the first stage as input. Meanwhile, the voltage unbalance caused by the railway is constrained to comply with the limits set by IEC/TR 61000-3-13. Case studies based on actual suburban railway lines in China demonstrate that the proposed scheduling optimization approach can significantly reduce the energy consumption of both railways and EVs.