ITALY: The European Commission's LIFE+ programme is to meet 50% of the cost of pilot installation of Alstom's HESOP regenerative energy recovery system on Milano metro Line 3.
HESOP is expected to recover almost all of the braking energy, equivalent to about 15% of total traction energy usage, enabling it to be used by other vehicles or fed back to the public grid.
The Milano installation will be a 1·5 kV DC version of a 750 V HESOP system in use at Bobigny-Pablo Picasso stop on tram Line T1 in Paris. Implementation is planned for early 2015.
