Dynamism of Parasite Capacitance of AC Electric Traction Line Inside the Railway Tunnels

Abstract

Air pollution by the fossil fuel-driven vehicles in the urban and suburban sections in the developed countries forced the adoption of electric traction in railways. Subsequently, traffic dense rail routes in many developing countries were also switched over to high voltage electric traction to reduce their dependency on petroleum products. Developing countries are the main beneficiaries of the high voltage electric railway traction system. As a result of the operational constraints evolved in maintaining partially electrified rail routes, developing countries are trending to electrify more rail routes at geographically challenged areas also. Tunnels constructed for metro railways in urban sections also raise the similar geographical challenges. Power supply interruption happened due to persisting earth fault on electric traction system even for a short duration will paralyze the rail network to a large extent. Hence precisely pin pointing the fault distance is essential to ensure the railway system reliability. Undesirable variations occurred in line parameters due to the bare conductors for the electric traction inside railway and metro train tunnels for very long stretches due to proximity of earth potential, and the subsequent nuisance crept in line fault distance locating algorithm studied through the experimentations conducted in actual working condition for re-modelling high voltage ac electric railway traction to precisely pin pointing the fault distance of it are presented in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• AC electric traction
• Broad Gauge
• Fault distance
• Over Head Equipment
• Parasite capacitance
• Railway tunnels
• Standard Gauge

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ravi Kumaran Nair.C

Nair C Ravi Kumaran presently works as electrical engineer in Indian Railways in senior executive cadre. He has 24 years of working experience in high voltage electrical traction installations. He has done his BTech from Calicut University, India, and MTech from Kerala University, India. He is currently pursuing PhD (Power/Engg,) at College of Engineering Studies, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India. So far, two papers published in international journals with SCI, on electric traction-related research works are to his credit. Email: [email protected]

Devender Kumar Saini

Devender Kumar Saini presently works as assistant professor Dept of Electrical Power and Energy, College of Engineering Studies, University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun, India. He has done his MTech and PhD from IIT Roorkee in 2009 and 2013, respectively. He has done his PhD on controller design for uncertain interval systems and their order reduction. Currently, he is working on protection for integration of renewable energy sources with distribution grid. His areas of interest are fault detection and protection, modelling of uncertain interval systems, robust control and challenges in the integration of RE sources with DT grid. Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

M. Jayaraju

M Jayaraju presently works as the principal, MES College of Engineering, Chathannur, Kollam. India. Formerly, he was the director of Agency for Non-conventional Energy and Rural Technology (ANERT), Ministry of Power, Govt. of Kerala, India. He has done his BTech from Kerala University, India, ME from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, He has done his PhD on high voltage power components testing from Kerala University. Email: [email protected]