Annual energy simulation for the air conditioning of Fuxing high speed trains

Highlights: • Test validated HVAC model in terms of load, energy and comfort. • PMV analysis for rail transit vehicle. • Annual power distribution for components and working modes. • SHR balance between load and HVAC system. • Energy overview for HVAC system of HSTs in China. China ranks first in the world both for the operating mileage of high-speed railways and the quantity of high-speed trains. The energy consumption of air conditioning ranks second for the sub-systems of high-speed trains. In this paper, a simulation model is created to calculate annual thermal load and electricity consumption hour by hour for Fuxing high-speed train in Harbin, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The simulation is validated in climate laboratory and shows 1.3%–13.2% deviation compared with the test results in different external temperatures. The simulation results show that the annual electricity consumption for a coach, the whole fleets of Fuxing trains and all high-speed trains in China are estimated as 60,050 kWh, 286.2 M kWh and 1.71G kWh respectively. Through analyzing the thermal load, electricity consumption and energy efficiency, six technical means are proposed to be implemented in the air conditioning of Fuxing trains considering both for energy saving and hygrothermal comfort. Heat pump and decreasing the inside setting temperature are the two methods to reduce the consumption in heating, and their saving will be 15.1% and 7.8% respectively. Replacing hot gas bypass by parallel compressors, removing reheating and reducing air flow of CFs in part-load are the three suggestions in cooling with saving of 9.6%, 4.9% and 5.4% respectively. Changing alternating current fans to electronically commutated fans will be one rich oil deposit where energy can be dug in all the working hours, and it will save 4.8% of total energy. Meanwhile, 131.0 M kWh and 781.8 M kWh (45.8%) electricity will be saved for Fuxing trains and all the high-speed trains in China respectively if all the six technical means can be implemented into the air conditioning system.