Rimini railway station

Customer:

Rimini railway station

Homepage:

www.rfi.it

Contacs:

Area Head office, tel: 0541703375

System manager :

Area Head Industrial Expert Francesco Galan

Within a new process of general requalification of LFM systems, a series of extremly interesting operations aimed at introducing innovative technologies for the command, control, supervision and the diagnostics of LFM lighting systems has taken place:

• to improve the efficiency of the systems
• to improve the management of expenditures (energy savings + saving on maintenance)
• to improve the safety of technical staff
• to control correct regulation of the systems
• to optimize the operation of the systems, by becoming more economical and increasing the quality of the service

All the previous points require permanent monitoring of the operation of the systems, with the need of:

• being in possession of all the information relative to the conformation of the systems and of each part (luminous panels and points)
• to know the location and the nature of the breakdown, up to each single luminous point
• verifying the quality of the components and their duration
• to intervene in the functioning of the systems through commands
• to minimize the installation impact, above all to the existing systems

In consideration of these requirements, the TECHNICAL ENERGY DIRECTION and ELECTRIC TRACTION of the INFRASTRUCTURES DIVISION of the FS headquarters in Rome, have proceeded to equip the illumination system of Rimini station with a MINOS SYSTEM of remote management/control, which is currently the most advanced remote management and control illumination system available, the result of extensive research coupled with a technological know how wholly Italian and in possession of an international patented licence.

In the case of Rimini station, the remote control lighting system consists of 7 distribution cabinets and 610 light points, distributed as follows:

• PANEL1: 12 floodlights of Sodium High pressure (SAP) from 400W each, locatedon N.1 beacon Tower (represented in fig.2)
• PANEL 2: 10 floodlights SAP from 400W each, located on N.2 beacon Tower
• PANEL 3: 9 floodlights SAP from 400W each, located on N.3 beacon Tower
• PANEL 4: 70 ceiling light fixtures with fluorescent lamps from 36W, 58W, located in the subway on the Bologna side
• PANEL 5: 222 ceiling light fixtures with fluorescent lamps from 11W, 18W, 32W, 36W and 58W, 400W located on the station canopy on the walkway of platform 1 and on N. 4 beacon Tower. (lamps SHP 400W)
• PANEL 6: 232 ceiling light fixtures with fluorescent lamps from 11W, 18W, 32W, 36W and 58W located on the station canopy on the walkway of platform 2 - 3.

• 11 ceiling light fixtures with fluorescent lamps from 18W, 36W, located in the subway on the Ancona side
• fluorescent lamps from 18W, located in the external area to the Operational Office.

PANEL 7:

• 16 ceiling light fixtures with fluorescent lamps from 18W, 32W, 36W, located on the pavement of platform 4 - 5
• 16 ceiling light fixtures with fluorescent lamps from 18W, 32W, 36W, located on the pavement of platform 6 - 7.

Installation types vary from panel to panel: panels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 comprise of ANDROS/FS and SYRA/FS; but in panel 7 the SYRA/FS are not present, because a measurement of the main electrical parameters at cabinet level and a measurement of the absorbed power is carried out, by which it is possible to verify the presence of at least one out of order lamp on 30 per phase.

The same type of control is carried out on the subway lamps on the Ancona side, fed from panel n.4.

MINOS SYSTEM consists of three parts (see Architecture of Minos System):

1) UNIT CONTROL/COMMAND LAMP, called SYRA/FS: is a programmable electronic device, of small dimensions (89x50x36mm) able to communicate on existing feed lines (power line carrier) with an electric power switchboard, connected in series to the luminous body;

2) UNIT CONTROL/COMMAND CABINET ANDROS/FS: is a series of electronic devices of reduced dimensions located on the switchboard of the existing power (or "cabinet"), able to dialogue power line carrier with the SYRA/FS devices combined together to the luminous bodies and converse via modem with remote PC of Management/Control and in a position to communicate with various CONTROL CABINET UNITS (ANDROS/FS) existing on the net.

3) SUPERVISIONUNIT = supervision PC equipped with modem and Software

Thanks to the system, permanent control becomes possible over all the parts that make up the lighting system; in fact, from one or more remote Personal Computers (PC), it is possible to visualize and have diagnostics of:

• state of present devices at panel level: switches, contact breakers, various auxiliaries, opening/closing hatches, etc.
• state of operation of each lamp, with a record of eventual breakdowns
• planning of the operating cycles of each system: switching on and general switching off
• semi-nocturnal partialization, reduction of flow by means of command centralized power controllers or reduction of the flow level of each single light point through commutation of bipower reactors, where necessary.

The remote management of the lighting system has turned out to be a top quality service, combined with strong economic savings to operating costs.

• optimizing the normal operation cycles, avoiding the system being switched on more than necessary, thanks to the astronomical clock, present in the ANDROS unit
• carrying out flexible "semi-nocturnal" partialization, by means of switching off, of a certain number of lamps in prefixed timetables (for example in the subway during nocturnal hours)
• eliminating energy dispersion on the lines caused by incorrectly rephased lamps
• eliminating almost totally the diurnal switching on to search for out of order lamps.

In particular, this last result allows that iterventions are no longer carried out with the systems under tension and guaranteeing therefore staff safety while carrying out maintenance.

On the other hand, the permanent control of the system and the consequent knowledge of the nature of breakdowns and their location, have concurred to reduce the costs of maintenance:

• to optimize the organization of maintenance operations in terms of staff and time
• to obtain precise information on operating costs
• to estimate the quality of the components used, based on their duration, correspondence regarding specific technical standards and/or regulations
• to replace out of order parts, effectively
• to maintain the standards of a high quality system in every component, with consequent safety to the technical staff and the user.

More precicely the installation at Rimini Station and in particular the 610 Syra (for control/command lamps) and 7 ANDROS (for control/command cabinets) have obtained total savings of the following items of expenditure equal to:

energy: 30%

maintenance: 45%