Potential Application of Solar Energy Systems for Electrified Urban Transportation Systems

The paper presents a novel approach toward the use of solar energy systems in public transportation. The concept of energy generation in PV systems for supplying a trolleybus transportation system is proposed for the city of Gdynia (Poland). The suggested way of energy production allows reducing the environmental harm impact of the municipal transportation system. Moreover, the proposed way of green energy use can be a more profitable alternative for selling transport items (trolleybuses) to the public energy grid. The presented analysis is based on the Monte Carlo Model method of stochastic simulation. It allows taking in consideration the random nature of the vehicle movement caused by road congestion and the uncertainty of the solar radiation. Several localisations of the PV system and the different structures of traction supply systems were analysed. The results of the analyses showed that despite of the uneven load in the traction power supply, it is possible to use 80% of the generated solar system energy.