Energy management in metro-transit systems: An innovative proposal toward an integrated and sustainable urban mobility system including plug-in electric vehicles

The energy consumptions growth, the upward interest for environmental sustainability and the technological evolution carry to the necessity to review the planning criteria of urban mobility systems in large cities and metropolitan areas. With this aim, new studies and projects are in progress, especially dealing with the power systems for metro-transit lines and surface electric vehicles. In this framework, the authors perform a study that, from an overview about the main energy management issues connected to the city transport, provides an innovative proposal for the design of sustainable urban mobility system: the integration of the metro-lines with surface plug-in electric vehicles. The present paper includes the energy analysis results, obtained by an application on a real case study of an home-made simulation software, describes the proposal in terms of power systems architecture and business models, pointing Out the potential advantages that its implementation could give in terms of energy saving, environmental sustainability and reduced economic impact, as a result of the maximum exploitation of existing electric power plant. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.