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TTC: Electric and alternative fuel buses

Ottawa is using loans from the CIB and grants from Infrastructure Canada to pledge for complete electrification of the bus fleet by 2021.

electricautonomy.ca

Ottawa to add 450 zero-emission buses to its transit fleet by 2027, fully electric by 2036

Ottawa is set to convert its entire fleet to electric in 15 years, leveraging a $400-million investment from the Canadian Infrastructure Bank
electricautonomy.ca electricautonomy.ca

Does the TTC have a plan for full electrification yet? They probably have the best operational dataset in the country.
 
kEiThZ said:
Ottawa is using loans from the CIB and grants from Infrastructure Canada to pledge for complete electrification of the bus fleet by 2021.

electricautonomy.ca

Ottawa to add 450 zero-emission buses to its transit fleet by 2027, fully electric by 2036

Ottawa is set to convert its entire fleet to electric in 15 years, leveraging a $400-million investment from the Canadian Infrastructure Bank
electricautonomy.ca electricautonomy.ca

Does the TTC have a plan for full electrification yet? They probably have the best operational dataset in the country.
Click to expand...

The TTC wants to purchase 300 battery-electric buses between 2023 and 2025. They plan to have a fully electric fleet by 2040.

I personally still think 300 buses is a bit too many and a bit too soon. The technology is ok, but as the TTC’s preliminary report shows, some areas have a long way to go.
 
^Other than cachet, I don't know why one would try to replace a fleet of diesel buses faster than they wear out. That would put a 12-15 year lifespan on the existing fleet. Maybe plan to eliminate all of them once the fleet has attritted down to the last 20-30%.... it may be more expensive than it's worth to try to wring every last mile out of the diesels given rising maintenance and costs as buses age and once diesels have become a minority fleet member.

Cash flow, and leveraging the current investment in diesels, both matter. Besides, the big carbon gain is when people get out of their cars and onto the diesel bus.... getting that converted to electric is secondary.

I hope that electric buses will be a more enjoyable rider experience, but maybe that remains to be seen.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
Other than cachet, I don't know why one would try to replace a fleet of diesel buses faster than they wear out.
Click to expand...


They don't. Ottawa's plan is basically to stop buying 40' diesel buses. And eventually to stop buying 60' articulated buses and double deckers whent that technology matures later this decade.

I would think the TTC should have enough knowledge and experience to at least move to a plan for all new 40' buses to be electric.
 
kEiThZ said:
Ottawa is using loans from the CIB and grants from Infrastructure Canada to pledge for complete electrification of the bus fleet by 2021.

electricautonomy.ca

Ottawa to add 450 zero-emission buses to its transit fleet by 2027, fully electric by 2036

Ottawa is set to convert its entire fleet to electric in 15 years, leveraging a $400-million investment from the Canadian Infrastructure Bank
electricautonomy.ca electricautonomy.ca

Does the TTC have a plan for full electrification yet? They probably have the best operational dataset in the country.
Click to expand...

I assume your 2021 comment is a typo. They mentioned 2036 for full electrification in the link you included.

Any government announcement that includes a 15+ 3 or 4 government change/election timeliness is an immediate distraction nonsensical announcement to me. So sad we allow them to do this over and over and over and over and over and over..... and over.
 
Sorry. Yes that was a typo.

That said, I don't think this is a huge deal with change of government. I'm not sure why a different government would screw over a city on this one. It's a decent use of government funding that is win-win. Let's cities cut operating costs, while reducing emissions for rather little federal investment.
 
On the eBus project, vehicle reliability is cited as a key issue:

Vehicle Reliability and Fleet Availability: Only one (New Flyer Industries) of three vendors for e-Buses are meeting availability and reliability targets. Action Plan: The TTC is working with all vendors on a daily basis to improve both vehicle availability and reliability to address these issues through root cause analysis, vehicle modifications and improvements for the supply chain.
Click to expand...

That's from Steve Munro's site. Most electric buses are not meeting requirements yet.
 

Future batteries, coming soon: Charge in seconds, last months and power over the air​

See link.
While smartphones, smart homes and even smart wearables are growing ever more advanced, they're still limited by power. The battery hasn't advanced in decades. But we're on the verge of a power revolution.

Big technology and car companies are all too aware of the limitations of lithium-ion batteries. While chips and operating systems are becoming more efficient to save power we're still only looking at a day or two of use on a smartphone before having to recharge.

While it may be some time before we get a week's life out of our phones, development is progressing well. We've collected all the best battery discoveries that could be with us soon, from over the air charging to super-fast 30-second re-charging. Hopefully, you'll be seeing this tech in your gadgets soon.
Click to expand...

Structural batteries could lead to superlight electric vehicles​

Research at Chalmers University of Technology has been looking at using the battery not only for power, but as a structural component, for many years. The advantage this offers is that a product can reduce structural components because the battery contains the strength to do those jobs. Using carbonfibre as the negative electrode while the positive is a lithium iron phosphate, the latest battery has a stiffness of 25GPa, although there's still some way to go to increase the energy capacity.
Click to expand...

A cobalt-free lithium-ion battery​

Researchers at the University of Texas have developed a lithium-ion battery that doesn't use cobalt for its cathode. Instead it switched to a high percentage of nickel (89 per cent) using manganese and aluminium for the other ingredients. "Cobalt is the least abundant and most expensive component in battery cathodes," said Professor Arumugam Manthiram, Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Texas Materials Institute. "And we are completely eliminating it." The team says they have overcome common problems with this solution, ensuring good battery life and an even distribution of ions.
Click to expand...

Sand battery gives three times more battery life​

This alternative type of lithium-ion battery uses silicon to achieve three times better performance than current graphite li-ion batteries. The battery is still lithium-ion like the one found in your smartphone, but it uses silicon instead of graphite in the anodes.

Scientists at the University of California Riverside have been focused on nano silicon for a while, but it's been degrading too quickly and is tough to produce in large quantities. By using sand it can be purified, powdered then ground with salt and magnesium before being heated to remove oxygen resulting in pure silicon. This is porous and three-dimensional which helps in performance and, potentially, the life-span of the batteries. We originally picked up on this research in 2014 and now it's coming to fruition.

Silanano is a battery tech startup that's bringing this technique to market and has seen big investment from companies like Daimler and BMW. The company say that its solution can be dropped into existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing, so it's set for scalable deployment, promising 20 per cent battery performance boost now, or 40 per cent in the near future.
Click to expand...

Capturing energy from Wi-Fi​

While wireless inductive charging is common, being able to capture energy from Wi-Fi or other electromagnetic waves remains a challenge. A team of researchers, however, has developed a rectenna (radio wave harvesting antenna) that is only several atoms think, making it incredibly flexible.

The idea is that devices can incorporate this molybdenum disulphide-based rectenna so that AC power can be harvested from Wi-Fi in the air and converted to DC, either to recharge a battery or power a device directly. That could see powered medical pills without the need for an internal battery (safer for the patient), or mobile devices that don't need to be connected to a power supply to recharge.
Click to expand...

Grabat graphene batteries​

Graphene batteries have the potential to be one of the most superior available. Grabat has developed graphene batteries that could offer electric cars a driving range of up to 500 miles on a charge.

Graphenano, the company behind the development, says the batteries can be charged to full in just a few minutes and can charge and discharge 33 times faster than lithium ion. Discharge is also crucial for things like cars that want vast amounts of power in order to pull away quickly.

There's no word on if Grabat batteries are currently being used in any products, but the company has batteries available for cars, drones, bikes and even the home.
Click to expand...

Transparent solar charger​

Alcatel has demoed a mobile phone with a transparent solar panel over the screen that would let users charge their phone by simply placing it in the sun.

Although it's not likely to be commercially available for some time, the company hopes that it will go some way to solving the daily issues of never having enough battery power. The phone will work with direct sunlight as well as standard lights, in the same way regular solar panels.
Click to expand...

Etc.
 
M II A II R II K said:
So are all the new busses bought now are all electric until they eventually phase out the gasoline busses by 2040.
Click to expand...
Not quite yet. There's still an order for diesel-electric hybrid buses that is due to be ordered this year. After that, I believe all orders will be battery-electric.
 
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