On 3rd of February more than 100 participants discussed the implementation of energy metering and billing systems for traction units on the UIC Energy Metering and Billing Day at UIC Headquarters in Paris.
The UIC Energy Metering and Billing Day formed the concluding event for the UIC Energy Billing Project. The UIC Energy Billing project developed over the last few years standard business processes which establish a traction energy settlement framework for Railway Undertakings and Infrastructure Managers for cross border traffic in Europe. The results are published in the UIC leaflet 930. Together with the standardization of metering equipment done by CENELEC this will enable Railway Undertakings to pay their electric energy according to the actual consumption.
The Workshop brought together representatives from Infrastructure Managers, Railway Undertakings as well as metering industry and vehicle manufacturers. Frank Meyer, Chief Financial Officer, DB Energie, opened the workshop with focusing on the challenges the UIC Energy Billing project was facing in the beginning: “It was a great challenge to bring together Infrastructure Managers and Railway Undertakings together in this project. And I am very happy that we could publish the UIC leaflet 930 as a result, which clearly defines the processes.”
After a presentation of the Energy Billing Project results by Joachim Essig (Head of Billing, DB Energie) three implemented energy settlement systems at DB, RFF (SOCLE) and European Railway Energy Settlement (ERESS) in Scandinavia and Belgium were presented. End of 2010 all three systems will have fully implemented the UIC leaflet 930. From then on cross border traffic can be billed according to the actual consumption.
Presentations from DB Schenker Rail, SNCF and Virgin Train demonstrated the clear demand and benefit metering and billing of traction energy will bring to operators:
• DB Schenker Rail has meters installed in the whole fleet and wishes to be able to make use out of their meters also outside Germany. 50% of all DB Schenker Rail trains cross at least one border.
• SNCF decided in December last year to install about 1000 traction energy meters. The energy reduction potential is estimated between 3 to 5 %
• Virgin Trains estimates the energy reduction by about 10% and negotiates currently with Network Rail about the billing conditions.
Presentations from ITF / EDV Froeschl, Alstom and Solvera Lynx demonstrated that also the hardware for traction energy metering and energy reduction management are available on the market. Some further developments have to be made for DC current, but the industry agrees that compliance with accuracy on system level as described in the EN 50463 will be possible soon for DC systems as well.
Henning Schwarz, UIC Coordinator Sustainable Development, concluded the workshop by saying “Energy Billing has been successfully finalized, but this is just the beginning of implementation of energy metering and billing systems on a larger scale. Energy metering and billing will be a key element to further reduce energy, costs and CO2 emissions of the railway sector.”
The key findings of the UIC Energy Billing Project are documented in
• UIC leaflet 930 – Exchange of data for cross-border railway energy settlement and
• Supporting documents on
Border points and polygons
o Estimation systems for un-metered trains
o Right of access to the consumption data by Railway Undertakings and Public Information provided by Infrastructure Managers
which support the implementation of Energy Billing Systems.
Two success criteria for the project were the close coordination with the European Railway Agency and CENELEC to define clear interfaces and avoid double work (see figure below) as well as the cooperation with railway undertakings in the “Energy Billing Advisory Council”, which was created from the very beginning of the project.
