Energy Consumption in Tram Transport

Abstract

Rail transport through the use of electric traction is more friendly for environment than other means of transport. It has a lot of benefits, mainly: the possibility of mass transport using as little energy as possible per one passenger, reducing crowd, reducing congestion, lower emission of pollution, weatherproof, more safety, regularity of travelling.
As we can see from the above mentioned benefits, public tram transport is one of the most popular means in Poland. Tram market in Poland is one of the largest in the world. Nowadays we have 14 thousand tram lines used by 16 companies, which gives a total of above 3600 cars. We have many types of trams exploited at present. The most popular are cars 105Na, characterized by low comfort for passengers, too low durability and high energy
consumption. Because these cars are at present exploited, on the basis of their structure many different modernizations are made. The examples could be two types of cars : 204WrAs and 205WrAs , which have been produced since 2005 by the Wrocław PROTRAM Company.
The largest Polish cities also use a modern trams stock produced by the largest Polish construction companies. One of the examples is recently using five-cars type 120Na produced by PESA company. This article presents results of measurements of energy consumptions of trams 105Na using traditional start –up resistance and trams PROTRAM 205WrAs type with asynchronous propulsion system in IGTB technology. Then the energy consumption is compared with data obtained from manufacturer of a modern tram PESA 120Na, working in the same conditions – asynchronous propulsion system.