Voltage Collapse Due to Reduced Headway in Electric Train Network

With the expansion of urban electric trains as a mean of public transport, electric train passengers expect trains to move faster and spend less time waiting at the stations. One of the most important factors in the early arrival of trains is headway or time distance between two trains. This cannot be reduced from the usual rate due to power quality and reliability as well as network security issues.In this paper, a 26-km railway power system has been simulated using MATLAB software and dynamic load flow of Newton - Raphson method. This test was conducted by decreasing train headway until voltage collapse occurs. As a result, the minimum train headway that causes the voltage collapse for this test system is 150 s. This confirms that the proposed algorithm can effectively be used to identify the point of voltage collapse in railway power systems.