Evaluation of the Reduction of Ground-side Reactive Power Considering Onboard Reactive Power Compensation in AC Electric Railway

In the Shinkansen system, the voltage drop caused by the train load is compensated by ground equipment such as Static Var Compensator (SVC) in the conventional method. However, a previous study proposed a method of compensation by the trains that consume reactive power, in addition to the ground equipment. By applying this method, it is possible to improve the compensation compared with when the feeder voltage is compensated only by the ground equipment. Then, the capacity of the ground equipment can be reduced under the same train load condition. However, it is necessary to decide the capacity of the ground equipment by considering the compensation of both the trains and the ground equipment. This article conducts a quantitative study on the effect of onboard reactive power compensation on the reduction of the ground equipment capacity. As a result, the capacity of ground equipment can be reduced up to approximately 83% of the conventional capacity.