A workshop on energy efficiency in transportation, and particularly, in the subway and the urban railway was held on 29th October 2014 at the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM), in collaboration with the Agencia Chilena de Eficiencia Energética (AChEE). It addressed the modeling of the global systemic balances in a network rail, along with the impacts on quality of service.
“Energy is a multidisciplinary issue. It is also a promising working field, with an important impact for the society. There are many research challenges to face. One of the biggest challenges is to convince industry to invest in research “, explained Jorge Amaya, CMM researcher and organizer of the event.
Marcelo Matus, researcher at the Centro de Energía of Universidad de Chile, opened the workshop. He focused on the technical and economics aspects of installing solar energy in the subway. He explained that the need to be more efficient and integrate renewable energy sources in transport is a global trend. “Santiago offers attractive potential compared with other world wide solar transport, considering for instance that Chilean capital city has the same latitude as Bagdad”, said Matus.
Paula Uribe, CMM project engineer, presented a holistic model of energy balance in all the areas of the subway system (tracks, tunnels, stations, depots, trains…). It showed that there are mathematical methodologies that serve to manage efficiently the energy. Unlike other tools, this one does not analyze the different factors (like temperature inside the tunnels and stations or speed curves) in an isolated way, but all of them are interconnected.
She was followed by her colleague, Álvaro Guzmán, who established a model of optimization of speed curves in the railway, so that it analyzed the different stages of the journey between two stations, such as braking or acceleration phases.
The third CMM project engineer taking the floor was Pablo Orellana, who is in charge of a software development for energy and thermal balance for the subway based on the models provided by Paula and Álvaro. This application lets see how the energy is transformed in heat and impacts in the passenger comfort and it is in validation process to be implemented from March 2015.
Claudio Gavilán, head of Transport Office of the Asociación Chilena de Eficiencia Energética, highlighted the importance of politics to make people energy efficiency awareness.
The workshop closed with Jaime Aleé, director of the Centro de Innovación del Litio. He pointed out that improving lithium batteries to produce electric cars is crucial. The importance of this initiative lays in the fact that Chile is a leading producer of lithium worldwide, besides its properties (it is the lightest mineral, and it has the half of the density of water and a large storage capacity).
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