In railway systems, electrical traction is more efficient, comfortable and more
economical than diesel traction. Since the railway transportation is a major public
transportation means in Sri Lanka, having an efficient and reliable electrified railway
transportation system will increase the capacity of railway transportation and attract
more passengers daily receiving the service.
This research is based on the proposed Panadura – Veyangoda railway electrification
project. It is of vital importance to identify the required maximum power of the
predicted system at the peak hours prior to designing the traction system. MATLAB
Simulink software has been applied for the modelling the speed, power and distance
of the train movement between stations with respect to time. Using the simulation
results obtained from MATLAB Simulink model, a load flow study for the total train
movements between Panadura station to Veyangoda station at peak hour is carried
out in DIgSILENT Power Factory software to obtain the maximum power required
for each traction substation.
Finally, the traction substation components are sized and layout of the system and
earth grid arrangement is presented for Ratmalana traction substation as a case in
point.
This software models can be applied for any other railway electrification systems to
be predicted by modifying and changing their parameters accordingly
