To reduce costs and eliminate air pollution, many cities are exploring the benefits of electric buses. Before electrified fleets take the road, however, officials will require a test run. The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) used a modeling approach.

David Holt, Lead Simulation Technician, NRC of Canada

Instead of large-scale testing on physical buses, the NRC worked with analytical software company Maplesoft to develop system-level models of bus dynamics.

The models allowed the research council to determine optimal locations for charging stations, calculate energy efficiency, and recommend a range of other community-specific factors.

In a presentation this month titled A Modern Electric Bus Fleet: Improving Public Transit with System-Level Modeling, a Tech Briefs reader had the following question for an NRC member:

“This study is for the particular route considered. Will the modeling be extended to different routes? Will each route have a customized bus with results obtained? Or will there be a mean for all routes considered?”

David Holt, Lead Simulation Technician, National Research Council of Canada: This is one route. We run an individual simulation for each route. Generally, we develop a single bus model. We simulated three buses for each of the six provided routes.

In the future, I think the plan is ultimately to have characterized buses. So, a specific 40-foot electric bus, with a certain battery capacity, from a certain manufacturer. We would characterize that specific bus, and apply it to routes as desired by the operators, or our musings as a research facility.

This response has been edited. To hear the entire Q&A, watch the full presentation: A Modern Electric Bus Fleet: Improving Public Transit with System-Level Modeling.

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