Elecrail Project
Elecrail is a project that is defined as the systematic analysis of energy consumption on
metropolitan, commuter and high-speed railway lines, with assessment of the energy impact and the
economic result, including the development of models and simulators that can be adapted to
different operating conditions by using different (measurable) parameters.
The current transport model, heavily dependent on oil products and non-renewable energy
sources, is not sustainable from the energy and environmental point of view. Given that passenger
transport is necessary, and considering that demand is expected to increase in parallel with
economic growth, public authorities are making significant efforts to reduce the external
dependencies of the transport system, especially those arising from energy use.
Therefore, Metro de Madrid and, in particular, its Control Centre Unit and the Rolling Stock
Engineering Unit, participate in the ELECRAIL project together with 11 other companies. This
project is subsidised by the Ministry of Public Works’ Centre for Public Works Studies and
Experimentation (CEDEX, Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas) and seeks to
theoretically analyse, simulate, experimentally verify and economically assess the actions that
need to be taken to reduce electric railway energy consumption.
The project is divided into six parts: General and common aspects, Vehicle characteristics,
Electricity supply, Cogeneration, Storage and network design, Timetable and driving design,
Application to High Speed lines and Metro and Commuter line Applications.
The project includes the development of simulation models that use quantifiable parameters
for the analysis of consumption reduction strategies, the efficient design of railway timetables,
the efficient design of speed regulation stages for application to the ATO (automatic driving)
system on underground networks, and the design of optimal driving considering the regeneration of
energy for other trains and the high-speed train network. The results of the simulation will be
tested in two real cases, on the Madrid metro network and on a high-speed line, at the end of the
project in December 2009.
The project will also involve developing electric models to which different values will be
assigned in order to evaluate the impact of the different strategies to be adopted when using
different technologies and design criteria.
