Electrical Phenomena of Modern Transportation Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Electric transportation systems are becoming increasingly more efficient and attractive, spanning traditional guideway systems (railways, metros, and monorails) and autonomous vehicles (electric vehicles of various sizes).

They all provide their performance and flexibility at the expense of an increasing power demand interacting with the power grids at substations and feeding or charging points. There has been a significant development of solutions to improve the efficiency of both existing systems and novel innovative products, at the infrastructure level as well as down to the single vehicle (or train).

Efficiency for such large and reconfigurable systems is the first challenge when it comes to their effective quantification, either by simulation or mostly experimentally through measurements.

The second significant issue is the impact on the feeding grid upstream, both in terms of stability and power quality; we must in fact remember that high performance implies high power concentration, with quick delivery in short times, as testified by the progress in EV charging stations.

The widespread integration of such transportation systems in the urban context to improve usability and public perception brings along the problem of interaction with humans (e.g., exposure to electromagnetic fields and aspects of electrical safety), existing technological systems (such as traffic lights, telecommunication lines, street lighting, and domestic appliances, for example, in terms of interference), and infrastructure (stray current and impressed potentials for rail-supported systems, upgrades of power distribution to accommodate for feeding, and charging points).

With the continuous evolution of solutions and technology, it is difficult to narrow down a topic proposing a solution without evaluating the interaction of a studied system from the remaining viewpoints: an electric holistic approach to such a modern transportation system is, thus, not to be excluded, backing up the more traditional study of the exemplified electric interaction.

Measurement methods and approaches for the quantification of electrical efficiency are extremely important, provided the involved economic and fiscal aspects, besides long-term benefits for ecology and green transition.

Power quality has, thus far, been studied with a wide range of techniques and approaches in the various sectors that need to be tuned up for a tighter integration of sources, their increasing number, and suitability of reference limits (that were stipulated years ago with different types of connected loads and network topologies).

Similarly, the increasing use of microgrids, the deployment of renewables, and the increased dynamics of connected loads have had a direct impact on network stability that remains a key issue, especially to allow for the flexible integration and expansion of existing grids.

Lastly, interference can be interpreted in a broad sense as the coupling of electric quantities onto an existing system, thus, encompassing induction, conductive coupling, and electromagnetic field emissions, down to the propagation of stray currents and consequential corrosion.

Thank you for your kind attention,

Cordially

Prof. Dr. Andrea Mariscotti
Guest Editor

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