Ultra-Capacitor Based Energy Storage System Design for Diesel Locomotive in Regenerative Braking

Abstract

The aim of this project is to build an energy storage system for regenerative braking, with use of dc to dc converter, and testing rig to perform testing for dc drive with dc motor with the super capacitor bank against diesel locomotive (WDM2) regenerative braking profiles. A bank was constructed along with a bidirectional DC to DC converter allowing practical testing of two of the four possible bank configurations. An average of 55% and 63% end to end efficiency was found for the two configurations respectively when tested fewer than two modes of regenerative braking profiles. It was found that capacitor banks with a higher maximum voltage i.e. more cells in series were more efficient as there were lower input and output currents and most of losses were restricted to the converter.