Simply let it roll: train with a focus on energy-saving Driving

Simply change roles
The railway uses energy-saving Driving

Every driver knows: A predictive style of driving, when the accelerator pedal is not equal to the stop is depressed and the car rolls just once, saves on petrol costs.

In the case of the railway energy-saving Driving is already since years in training and in daily practice. Support, according to a railway to reduce speaker by driving assistance systems, which support drivers in the process, the energy consumption during the train journey, by providing concrete recommendations for certain sections.

The driver can save up to ten percent of energy, without the punctuality suffer, said a railway spokesman. “On the route Munich – Hamburg are in long-distance transport 1300 kilowatt hours – as much as a one-person home consumes holding, on average, per year.”

“It is madness – 50 kilometers from Cologne, I can let the train just roll out,” said engineer Felix Mayer, driving an ICE high-speed line from Frankfurt via Limburg to Cologne. Extra he needed to accelerate only if there was a delay. “But if we are in the Plan, by rolling it up in Cologne.” It looks similar to the information that is on the route Stuttgart – Mannheim: 50 kilometers from Mannheim, the driver can let the train roll-out, and the maximum energy saving can reach.

Like many of his colleagues, Mayer has technical support in the Form of a driver assistance system. Also power measurement meter record the energy consumption and the Energy recovery of a vehicle on a track. There are every month Feedback, to know how much energy the driver needed.

What is true for the long-distance traffic and freight traffic, is also used in regional transport. The local transport subsidiary, DB Regio has saved the information, within two years of the 240 million kilowatt-hours of electricity – the equivalent to the energy consumption of a medium-sized city in the same period.

“Basically, it is also the S-Bahn to drive energy-saving by rapidly approached, the brakes as much as possible of the energy fed back into the grid, or the train is left in the right roles,” said a spokeswoman for the S-Bahn Rhein-Main in Frankfurt. All of the drivers and the S-Bahn would be trained during their training and also in regular practical training in energy-saving.

The energy-saving Drive at the end is one of the tools to the DB-aim to be carbon neutral by 2050, to implement. Energy meters used in electric vehicles of DB Regio has been around since 2002. For the past two years in diesel railcars, measuring systems are in use to help to significant savings in fuel consumption. Here, the systems show the driver driving recommendations. The railway expects a savings potential of around 11.5 million litres of Diesel per year – and thus also the saving of more than 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.