Smart Power & Energy Semi Co., Limited
Full Star Industries Limited
L Lab Corporation (Hong Kong) Limited
Subway is one of the most common transport in urban cities. In China, the total length of subway is 6,370 kilometers as of the end of 2019, and is expected to exceed 11,000 kilometers in 2029, according to the data reported by the Ministry of Transportation 2019. The annual electricity consumption is about 42 billion kWh, in which, 14% of the electricity is consumed by train braking system. It results in severe heat dissipation problem. Consequently, more energies are required for cooling systems such as air-conditioning, which are uneconomical, environmentally unfriendly and energy unconservative, however. Therefore, a promising energy collection system for recycling the regenerative breaking energy with improved efficiency, power density and advanced control methodologies is the key factor for driving technology innovation and evolution in the industry. This project aims to develop a high efficiency and high power density energy storage system solution to solve the coupled electrical-thermal and integration challenges for recycling the regenerative braking energies in metro applications. The development of a series of key enabling platform technologies is proposed, including (1) the application of Silicon Carbide (SiC) devices with proposed anti-crosstalk driver circuits for improved reliability operations; (2) the exploiting of high-order multi-resonant topology with applications of high switching frequency and soft-switching operations; and (3) the derivation of virtual DC machine control methodology for improving the traction line voltage stability and prolonging battery service lifetime. It is believed that the proposed platform technologies are not only suitable for metro and traction systems, but also adoptable in other smart city scenarios where the collection of regenerative braking energies and implementation of energy storage systems are required, such as electric vehicles (EVs), escalators, elevators and etc. Additionally, the China subway market is showing an increasing trend in this decade, and is expected to reach RMB$9.78 billion in 2029, according to Ministry of Transport in China 2019. It is targeted that the proposed project is to provide not only a technology platform, but also a tangible high efficiency, high power density, improved reliability and safety energy storage system solution beneficial to smart city related applications in Hong Kong, China and worldwide.