Possibilities of Interfacing Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructures with AC Railways

Recent advances in battery charging and storage techniques have brought a wide spread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). However, these have only presented an EV applicable for short range commuting, which fails to appeal to a driver with incidental long-range commuting requirements. This paper investigates the possibility of long-range electric vehicle commuting. An accessible, electrified and geographically spread railway network becomes a potential EV charging infrastructure by taking advantage of the multiple instances that national roads and electrified railways fall within a desired range. Road-rail near points are computed for selected South African national roads by observing the unique routing techniques used in constructing rail and road systems,. Locations are proposed for charging stations on selected national roads. The study further investigates the resultant power flow and technical implications of an AC railway network interconnected with EV charging stations. The paper finally presents the changes required in a power flow applications in order to determine the state of an AC railway’s network, which now has a new topology due to EV battery loads.