Powerbox Australia News

PREMIUM S.A Railway Capabilities

Written by Powerbox | May 11, 2020 1:56:29 AM

Premium S.A manufacture robust and highly reliable products that meet the demanding regulations and standards of the transportation and rail sectors offering a long life of the solution.

QUALITY GUARANTEED SINCE 1985

Premium S.A have designed and manufactured an extensive range of energy conversion solutions for the transportation market and specifically in railway applications for over 35 years. Their solutions are designed to work under demanding environmental conditions. All processes, from design to testing and manufacturing, are carried out in Barcelona.

Premium S.A's know-how allows them to offer solutions that cover very diverse applications within the railway sector. They have worked with worldwide manufacturers and suppliers of transportation systems since 1985, which places us as a trusted technological partner.

They have a standard range of converters, inverters and power supplies that comply with regulations and they also develop custom made products according to the needs of each application regardless of the size of the project. This knowledge base allows us to develop a product from scratch, reducing costs and delivery times.

Premium S.A guarantee quality from the design and throughout the manufacturing process with the most advanced testing systems.

APPLICATIONS

Some of the applications, both on rolling stock and on track, where PREMIUM S.A solutions are currently part or are:

  • Propulsion systems
  • Auxiliary and emergency power supply
  • Battery chargers
  • Low battery starters
  • Engine start
  • ATP and ATO signalling systems
  • HVAC
  • Running lights
  • Control equipment
  • Passenger information systems

PREMIUM PRODUCTS OFFER

  • High efficiency
  • Combinations of inputs and outputs according to needs
  • Wide ranges of input voltage
  • High insulation input/output/ground
  • Wide ranges of operating temperature (-50 to +85ºC)
  • Different cooling systems: forced ventilation, conduction or natural convection
  • Diagnosis and remote control
  • Multiple formats: chassis mounting, 19 “rack, DIN rail, ...
  • Up to IP-68 protection
  • Any type of connector combination
  • RS-232, ModBus, ProfiBus, CanBus, Ethernet/IP, TRDP (Train Real Time Data Protocol) communications
  • Pure sinusoidal output voltages in inverters

RAILWAY MARKET STANDARDS

Premium S.A solutions for the railway market comply with standards according to the needs of the application. Some of them are:

  • IEC50155 (Rolling stock electronic equipment)
  • IEC45545 (Fire & Smoke)
  • IEC61373 (Shock & Vibration)
  • IEC60950-1 IEC63268-1 (Safety)
  • IEC50121-3-2, IEC50124-1 (EMC)
  • IEC50163 (Traction supply voltage)
  • RIA 12 surge protection (3.5VN 20ms)
  • RIA 13 and RIA 20 mechanical standards

 

CASE STUDY · RAILWAY

HV input 3ph inverter for demanding railway HVAC systems

Rolling stock railway systems are usually fed from secured battery voltage (typically: 24V, 36V, 72V or 110V) or from the AC voltage supplied by a high-power auxiliary converter. However, when it is time to refurbish an old train, many peculiarities can arise.

The Challenge

In this case our customer faced the need to feed an HVAC system (fans and compressors) with an atypical voltage line: 500Vdc +/-2%. The challenge consisted on designing a new versatile 3-phase inverter to be used in two independent subsystems: supplying power to 3.2kVA HVAC compressors and feeding impulsion AC fans. In both cases it had to be possible to trim the output voltage and frequency and, most important, the input had to be fed with 500Vdc.

Powering The Challenge

We built a 3.2kVA railway inverter according to EN50155:2017 norm and with special design for enhanced life expectancy. The product featured a 500Vdc input and a configurable output voltage (from 200Vac to 460Vac and from 5Hz to 60Hz), remote controlling signals, alarms, soft-start ramps and RS-232 programming. Based on our experience in designing and manufacturing ruggedized 3-phase inverters, we were able to provide a custom product design meeting a tight schedule and reaching competitive NRE costs.

During the design phase and through follow-up meetings with our customer, we discovered that 

they wanted to use some contactors and relays between the inverter and the motor to be able to change configuration from Star to Delta so they would have two different motor speeds. We suggested to skip all these components, connectmotor directly to the inverter and control the fan speed directly through the inverter output. Finally, we modified our initial design to add a control pin to indicate “high speed” or “low speed” so the converter fed the motors with the appropriate voltage and frequency (both programmable), saving costly extra components.