Extended Optimisation of Periodic Urban Train Operation Considering Regenerative Braking Energy Utilisation Between Adjacent Two Trains

Energy-efficient train operation in electric railways has been focused on the single train aspect.However, further optimisation can be achieved by exchanging regenerative braking energy between trains.In this study, trains are considered in pairs consisting of a braking train as provider and a powering train as receiver arranged in temporal order.Firstly, the operation of the provider train is fixed, and then the operation of the receiver train is adjusted according to the dynamics of the provider train.The operation adjustment is achieved by a method based on neighbourhood search proposed in our work.The case studies demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in reducing the net energy consumption of multiple trains and can be easily generalised to the case of multi-train periodic operation of a long term since in every pair of trains, only the receiver train is adjusted.