Evaluation of cyclic battery ageing for railway vehicle application

Kurzfassung

Mobile transportation systems rely heavily on hydrocarbon based internal combustions engines (ICE) as the prime mover of vehicles. For rail applications electrification of the route provides an opportunity to improve efficiency and eliminate local emissions at point of use. However, route electrification is not always cost effective for secondary routes which see lower passenger volumes and less frequent trains; there is therefore an increasing interest in railway vehicles being equipped with energy storage based propulsion systems. Most of the railway vehicles that use an electrical traction energy storage system are at a prototype stage. Therefore, long-term real life data for the behaviour of traction batteries is not available up to now. The study presented in this paper describes ageing characterisation of two battery chemistries (Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) and Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP)) for representative rail duty cycles. Test bench trials are performed to represent roughly 1500 h of battery operation. A Battery Only and a Hybrid Energy Storage System case are considered.