What is BS EN 50591 about?
BS EN 50591 is a European standard on railway vehicles to support rolling stock procurement, especially life cycle cost (LCC) assessment.
BS EN 50591 is applicable to the specification and verification of energy consumption of railway rolling stock. BS EN 50591 establishes a criterion for the energy consumption of rolling stock to calculate the total net energy consumed, either at the current collector or from the fuel tank, over a predefined service profile, to ensure that the results are directly comparable or representative of the real operation of the train.
BS EN 50591 provides the framework that gives guidance on the generation of comparable energy performance values for trains and locomotives on a common basis and thereby supports benchmarking and improvement of the energy efficiency of rail vehicles.
NOTE: BS EN 50591 does not cover the comparison of energy consumption with other modes of transportation, or even for comparison between diesel and electric traction, covering only the energy consumption of the railway rolling stock itself.
Who is BS EN 50591 for?
BS EN 50591 on railway rolling stock is useful for:
- Railway engineer
- Mechanical engineer
- Manufacturers of railway rolling stock
Why should you use BS EN 50591?
Energy is an integral quantity and energy consumption of the train is used for propelling the train and reveals the current average energy consumption of large stations. BS EN 50591 provides the infrastructure and operational requirements of energy consumption of railway rolling stock.
The train modes are explained in BS EN 50591 namely in-service with commercial operation mode, in-service without commercial operation mode and parking mode. BS EN 50591 focuses on traction and traction auxiliaries energy in-service mode on a single train run for a train travelling from origin to destination. BS EN 50591 provides guidance regarding the energy consumption for the HVAC system in-service mode and parking mode. BS EN 50591 includes energy consumption related to the passenger compartments’ HVAC units, the active driver’s cab unit and the reduced amount for the inactive driver’s cab unit.
Overall, BS EN 50591 could help you in the analysis of feasible energy-saving and emission, reducing solutions for railway rolling stock, this minimizes the energy wastage and thus saves cost of maintenance and operation.
What’s changed since the last update?
BS EN 50591:2019 supersedes CLC/TS 50591:2013. BS EN 50591:2019 includes some technical changes with respect to CLC/TS 50591:2013. These include:
- The adoption of existing CLC/TS 50591 enquiry comments
- The harmonization with results from the European Lighthouse Project Roll2Rail and the inclusion of an HVAC energy quantification method
- Since separate methods for traction and HVAC energy quantification are described, the document structure has been revised
