Smart Rail Track Monitoring by Energy Harvesting

Rail infrastructure operators globally have begun moves towards smart intelligent network infrastructure built upon the placement of hundreds of thousands of various sensors/device types on and along tracks as required for predictive/preventative maintenance. Deployment is currently significantly hampered by affordability and maintenance liability of suitable trackside power options. Remote cable-delivered power is too expensive and impractical and battery-powered devices are limited by battery lifetimes which means disruptive access, cost and safety challenges of regular changes and the sustainability challenge of extensive battery waste. Energy harvesting-based power has been previously considered but found to produce too little power using the approaches that could be practically implemented.

Encortec has a gamechanger energy harvesting-based power solution which solves this problem, providing an order of magnitude greater autonomous power supply than other energy harvesting approaches through a novel patented approach. Magnetic flux energy around rail tracks, generated from track return current by passing trains powered by overhead line equipment (OLE) is harvested giving industry leading levels of power. Thus, power can be supplied to sensors as the trains pass by multiple times per hour. This enables maintenance-free deployment of the full range of wireless sensors giving the frequency and range of sensed data required. Proof-of-concept/technical feasibility of the energy harvesting approach has already been established.

This proposed industrial stage R&D project aims to develop full prototype energy harvesting-powered sensor devices covering three Network Rail defined sensing scenarios (flooding, rail temperature and track vibration), combined with long-range wireless communications and data analytics and to investigate performance in the varied real-world live rail environments supported by Network Rail. Induced magnetic flux energy and therefore power varies with a number of factors which will determine real-world practicality of the solution. This R&D is a precursor to later, scaled-up trials to demonstrate the value of a complete solution.