Safeguarding a Railways mission critical load

TSI hybrid inverters help major railway improve uptime and efficiency !

CE+T Power replaced the UPS installation of a major Railway Company with its line of Modular Inverters resulting in higher efficiency and availability, lower maintenance costs, and preparing for future growth!

The Customer
The customer operates a major rail network of both freight and passenger traffic in the Mediterranean basin. Given the nature of their business in which keeping to schedule is a key competitive factor and correct signaling can be a life or death issue, the railway requires 100% availability. They simply cant afford to suffer power outages or other disruptions to their infrastructure, which includes signalization and scheduling functions, among others.

The Challenge
One of the main operations centers of the company controls the signaling functions for the railways entire network. The power requirements to back-up this operations center are 27kVA in AC and 8kW in DC. It is equipped with a UPS of 40kVA, several rectifiers and several stabilizers. The main problem faced by the customer was that the UPS constituted a single point of failure. Even though the site had back-up equipment, any failure of the UPS would cause an interruption of service for a significant period of time. Another issue was that the stabilizers were unable to properly filter electrical disruptions or surges in the network.
Stabilizers

the UPS constituted a Single Point of failure.

Batteries

AC Load

AC in

UPS

Rectiers

DC Load

Moreover, when the UPS transferred power to the batteries it caused a disruption of several milliseconds, and this disruption was transmitted in its entirety to the AC load. Also, the rectifiers were in a redundant configuration which was indeed effective in providing high availability. However, the batteries being on the wrong side of the UPS, they could not help reduce the strain on the rectifiers in case of a sudden increase in the demand

Railway Companys initial installation

Construction Electronique + Communications S.A. (CE+T S.A.) Rue du charbonnage 12 B-4020 Wandre Belgium +32 4 345 67 00 +32 4 345 67 01 Email: info@cet-power.com www.cet-power.com VAT : BE-404404480 RPM Lige - N Enreg. Entrepreneur / Reg. Aannemer Nr. : 404.404.480/09.00.9.3

of DC power! The rectifiers had then no choice but to deliver more power with a drop in voltage. For the above reasons, the overall efficiency of the installation was below 50%. Moreover, the heat produced by the equipment made it difficult to maintain a constant temperature, particularly during the summer months, and fluctuations in the temperature of equipment reduced the life of the batteries. In addition, since the status of the batteries was not continuously monitored, any battery failure would only be detected too late.

and achieve a far higher level of availability than previously. Moreover, a stable and reliable DC load can be supplied directly by the battery. n Reduced maintenance costs: unlike the previous black box UPS, the plug and play solution from CE+T Power is modular and open. This helped reduce maintenance costs. Moreover, the monitoring tools provided by CE+T Power helped the railway to conduct preventive maintenance. n Quality: thanks to TSI, the quality of the delivered power has improved; the costly and damaging disruptions and disturbances passed to the railways equipment are a thing of the past. n Scalability: the railway is likely to expand or consolidate its operations in the near future. In such a case, TSIs modularity will be a major benefit, since installed capacity can be matched to the facilitys effective needs. Moreover, thanks to TSIs modular system architecture, the AC and DC loads can be extended separately, if required.

The Solution
CE+T Power proposed to replace the railways UPS with a solution based on its TSI modular converter. The modular TSI converters fit seamlessly into the railways existing infrastructure; the company could keep its existing park of rectifiers and stabilizers.

AC in

AC Load
Battery Backup

Rectiers

DC Load

CE+T Powers solution

Benefits This solution provided the Railway Company with the following benefits: n Higher efficiency: previously the company used a chain of equipment (UPS, rectifier, stabilizer). To reach a high efficiency, an optimization of each individual equipment was necessary. By reducing the number of different devices in the chain and by using more efficient ones, the Company was able to reduce energy losses by more than 50%, achieving an outstanding efficiency of 96%. n Higher availability: due to the modularity of the TSI solution and its true redundancy, the railway was able to create a system with no single point of failure

CE+T Power Modular Inverters

CE+T Power is the world leader in AC backup technology. The company develops, manufactures and markets Inverters, Modular UPS, Remote Line Powering and Off Grid Powering solutions to the Telecom, Industrial and Datacom/IT markets worldwide. For more information please visit our website at http://www.cet-power.com

Construction Electronique + Communications S.A. (CE+T S.A.) Rue du charbonnage 12 B-4020 Wandre Belgium +32 4 345 67 00 +32 4 345 67 01 Email: info@cet-power.com www.cet-power.com VAT : BE-404404480 RPM Lige - N Enreg. Entrepreneur / Reg. Aannemer Nr. : 404.404.480/09.00.9.3