Organisation

The coaches have to be warm when the trains are cleaned. However the time the cleaning personnel arrives varies too much to program the timer in a way to take this into consideration. Due to low salaries, the motivation of cleaning personnel to collaborate in such measures is generally low.

Heterogeneity of stock and stand-still facilities

The on-board equipment for controlling comfort functions are highly variable between vehicles. This impedes the development of a generalized automatic control with big scale effects.

Acceptance by management

As long as no metering equipment is in place to measure energy consumption during standstill, it is difficult to make a cost-benefit analysis and to convince management.

Danger of freezing

Some operators are reluctant to switch off heating in the night due to the danger of freezing and damage to equipment. DSB has discussed installing a timer to reduce the coach temperature to 5°C during the night and then automatically raise it to 22°C before service. However, it could not be ruled out that in exceptionally cold periods the inside temperature would fall below 5°C with consequences such as water freezing in the toilets etc. Therefore the measure was not implemented in the end.

• Assessment of current operation practice for standstill in order to identify possible measures and required functionalities of an automatic control tool.
• Motivation and incentives of cleaning personnel to collaborate in saving measures
• Advanced control systems to avoid danger of freezing etc.

PLC system at SJ

An automatic control for overnight standstill is currently studied in Sweden. The so called PLC system (Programmable Logistic Control) will optimise the use of electricity so that heat and light is minimised during parking hours, but automatically switched back on well before service starts again. During service the temperature lies between 18 and 20° C. When service ends, coach temperature is lowered to 12° C, and raised again to service temperature one hour before service start. This is done fully automatically. In order to avoid failures everything is built in twice.