Chile. A team of experts from the University of Chile developed software that simulates and models the energy expenditure of metro systems.
It was licensed so that it can be used by rail transport operators, builders, engineering companies and universities. The project also seeks to generate electricity through the installation of solar panels on platforms and urban railway stations.
To move the trains that circulate through the Santiago Metro network, 2.5% of the electrical energy used by the capital is used. 70% of this percentage goes to running the machines and 30% to other needs such as air conditioning, lighting, operation of boxes, commerce, food and drink vending machines, ATMs and station commerce.
Therefore, any savings that can be made in energy expenditure have a great impact on the final balance of companies or on the improvement of their services, by freeing up resources that can be redirected to the improvement of infrastructure, security, air conditioning and attention to the public.
Achieving these advances in energy efficiency was the objective of the project 'Optimal integration of solar energy in the planning and operation of urban rail public transport systems', developed by researchers from the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM), the Energy Center and the Solar Energy Center of the University of Chile.
The program seeks to improve the planning of operations and the conduction of the urban railway to use less energy, something key, given that the greatest consumption occurs when starting and braking the trains. The technology also seeks to contribute to improving passenger comfort through temperature and humidity control.
Currently, the program is already being installed on Leftraru, the most powerful supercomputer in Chile run by the National High Performance Computing Laboratory hosted in the same CMM.
One of the project's engineers, Paula Uribe, evidenced how the software works from a simulation of the movement of trains along a metro line. This he mentioned in a statement to FayerWayer:
Peaks in power or energy consumption are always when accelerating. Reducing them impacts the electricity bill that Metro will pay. Peaks are expensive, so it is desirable that there are none.
In a closing seminar of the project, Jorge Amaya, another expert of the group, recalled the beginnings of Osiris, as they called the software: "It was a project that we carried out with the Metro systems of the European Union, where more than 17 partners participated in which the MWC was the only non-European (...) The consortium sought to save up to 5% in energy expenditure in the meters," he said.
Likewise, researchers from the Energy Center have addressed the possibility of generating energy through the installation of solar panels covering outdoor roads or Metro stations. This power could be used to power air conditioning equipment and other services, since Santiago has the advantage that a large part of the roads that are on the surface are parallel to the mountain range, so they can receive solar radiation for a good part of the day.
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