Easy-to-implement measurement method for the energy dissipated on board train with uncertainty estimation

In the near future, the railway is seen as the most important solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions due to transportation. Investment in this sectors are ongoing, in order to increase both the level of service and energy efficiency. The adoption of recent technological solutions, as storage systems or reversible substations, could foster the efficiency, increasing the capability of recovering braking energy. The braking energy is very difficult to measure, it requires installing expensive measurement systems on board trains. In a previous paper the authors already faced this issue developing an accurate technique usable off-line. In the present paper a simplified method, easy to be implemented on train control unit, based only on already available data, is proposed. The paper describes the phenomena of interest and related measurement issues. The analytical model for the power measurement together with a deep analysis on the input quantities are presented. The uncertainty analysis of the proposed method is presented and the uncertainty budget is performed on a real test case. The metrological performances of the method show suitable accuracy level for train energy management. [Display omitted] •Recovering braking power of trains allow to improve the efficiency of the rail system.•Quantifying amount of energy recoverable is fundamental to dimension unconventional substations.•A simplified method for accurate energy measurement of pulsed waveforms is developed.•This method achieves accurate results using instrumentation already present on trains.•The analytical model and an in-depth uncertainty analysis are presented.