Enhanced Strategy for Optimizing Net Energy Consumption of Railway Systems Using Speed Profile and Variable Headway

Energy-efficient operation of railway systems is of great importance for both environmental and economic reasons. Minimizing net energy consumption helps to achieve such energy-efficient operation. In this paper, the train’s speed profile and headway between trains are controlled to achieve lower traction energy consumption and higher train synchronization for better regenerative braking energy utilization. Eventually, the net energy consumption, defined as the difference between the traction energy consumption and the utilization of regenerative braking energy, is minimized. Two optimization problems are defined to solve the problem efficiently. The first main problem is to find the optimal speeds at each segment of the railway track. The second sub-problem’s objective is to find the optimal values of travel time, dwell time, and headway for every suggested solution to the main problem. Both problems are solved using the genetic algorithm. Numerical results are based on the actual operation data of the Beijing Metro Yizhuang Line in China. In the numerical results, the proposed strategy of dividing the problem into two problems and the use of variable headway shows an enhancement in reducing net energy consumption by 7.5% compared to other strategies in the literature.