A railway energy management system based on hierarchical coordination of electric traction substation energy flows
and on-route trains energy consumption is presented in the paper. The railway system is divided into energy-efficient
individual trains energy consumption management as a lower level, and the energy-cost-efficient electric traction
substation energy flows management as a higher level. The levels are coordinated through parametric hierarchical
model predictive control with the main goal of additionally decreasing the operational costs of the overall system.
Through interactions with the power grid at the higher level, the system can provide ancillary services and respond
to various grid requests. At the same time, lower level trains driving profiles are adjusted to attain the minimum
cost of system operation with timetables and on-route constraints respected. The developed algorithm is verified
against a detailed real case study scenario with the presented results showing significant cost and energy consumption
reduction