Electric Bus Service in Athlone

zg3409

https://twitter.com/Buseireann/status/1616405350235643906?s=20&t=OChBy6MXH9KuoMEY5mcUyw

18 X 150kW charging units (4 X dual CCS shown) 1megawatt substation shown. Single decker bus eireann. Talk of 11 busses (presumably to cover entire route with multiple busses and to allow for full electric route. )

zg3409

https://fb.watch/ifWGDZvO-h/

Local politician discusses. Note bus has cameras instead of mirrors which has its own thread.

zg3409

https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-news/143233/irelands-first-all-electric-town-bus-service-launched-athlone/

https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/2254e-minister-ryan-launches-irelands-first-all-electric-town-bus-service-in-athlone/

https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2023/0120/1349810-athlone-bus/

More links

waterwelly

€600000 each?

silver_sky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120152729#Comment_120152729

Where did you see that?

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153437#Comment_120153437

Transport chiefs have announced the game-changing purchase of 120 new fully electric buses for Ireland.

The historic €80.4m deal with Co Antrim’s Wrightbus is aimed at helping the country decarbonise its transport fleet.

€666000 each?

slave1

We don’t know the breakdown, could include charging infrastructure/training/disposal of old fleet etc.

We’re dosed in Athlone, already have the An Post electric fleet, 9 public fast chargers (one switched off), lots of AC chargers and good take up of EVs around the town

silver_sky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153493#Comment_120153493

Those are for the doubledeckers. These ones in Athlone are ADL Enviro 200's. Different manufacturer, spec, and model.

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153656#Comment_120153656

Today FM:

A fully electric fleet of buses are hitting the streets of Athlone.

It's the country's first fully electric town bus service.

The 11 Bus Éireann vehicles cost €600,000 each and will be fully operational in the town by January 29th.

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153568#Comment_120153568

The overall project cost is €10m, so €909000 each when you include infrastructure/training/disposal etc.

The project, a €10 million investment by the NTA, is the first to launch under the government’s Pathfinder Programme

silver_sky

11x BYD ADL Enviro200EV with 27 fixed seats and six folding seats

https://www.electrive.com/2023/01/24/ireland-launches-first-all-electric-bus-service/

Question now is - what's the next town, and when? I'm sick of "trials" for EVs. They work, just roll them out.

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153777#Comment_120153777

How do they "work" though?

London has one of the biggest electric bus fleets in Europe at about 9% electrified.

And let's not forget they are substantially fossil fuel powered anyway.

Sure it's only €600k each.

slave1

If charged at night they shouldn’t be substantially fossil fuel

silver_sky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153917#Comment_120153917

Charge at night/during downtime. Usually they will be delivered with some sort of fleet management solution. Keep in mind that diesel buses are not cheap at all.

The costs for this project would probably include training, software, maintenance contract, infrastructure (which includes a sub station!), charge points, and the buses.

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153977#Comment_120153977

It's fine in our smaller places like Athlone or maybe Limerick but Dublin and perhaps Cork not so easy.

In London buses need to be charged throughout the day.

They can't be just "rolled out" as you suggest. It needs to be on a trial buses trying a few routes first.

zg3409

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154076#Comment_120154076

The real world range is well known. Sure it may not work on every route or they might need to switch bus mid shift or keep some routes fossil fuel only, however many routes are known today could be 100% electric. Total cost of ownership, reliability, cost to repair etc may be a bit of an unknown but that can be covered in a warranty contract.

Upgrading supplies for depots and locations of depots versus location of high power may mean moving depots or overnight parking spots but these are easy problems to solve. There is no real need to trial, just do the sums and decide. Dublin bus etc has been trialling EV busses for years.

slave1

I don't know the capability of the bus but on first read 150kW seems low, sure there are cars aplenty that can take way more than that.

If going to be an overnight charge then I would assume not a problem as the single charge range will never be exceeded on the Athlone routes.

I have heard locally that these buses are flimsy and that if they get a side impact there's little to take a hit, could be just chatter. Batteries are in the roof.

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155051#Comment_120155051

have heard locally that these buses are flimsy and that if they get a side impact there's little to take a hit, could be just chatter. Batteries are in the roof

Strange place to put the batteries. It would make the centre of gravity in the bus worse than if they were in the floor which would seem like the logical place for them. Maybe it's a safety thing or something but it makes no sense to me having them in the roof.

Also I net the seats in these buses are horrible things like what's in most of the Dublin Buses or the single Decker Go Ahead buses. Horrible things altogether. Ok for short journeys but not for long ones and certainly not on country roads. No comfort to them at all unlike the Double Decker buses by VDL that is used Bus Eireann, TFI and some Go Ahead routes sometimes use. The seats in them are positively luxurious. That's what all buses and couches should be like. I understand for the beginning of electric buses that seats like that would add too much weight so they have to be basic but hopefully the future ones will be better.

afatbollix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155051#Comment_120155051

Its 2 x 150 Kw chargers per bus.

My local route is now electric in London.

Double-decker buses completely electric. I thought it had a engine to top it up but it didn't. Even has air con and has a heat pump for the winter.

Can do 165 miles on a single charge. The route is only 7 miles long so can happily do it all day. Unless it's inter town/city buses most routes are short for these type of uses. So can do it all on one charge a day.

Who has the oldest buses? Thats who will get the next load of them. No new diesel buses will be bought from now on!

slave1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155394#Comment_120155394

perhaps the lower portion (the skateboard approach) is reserved for luggage, I dunno?

silver_sky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1eaHUaMOCo

Keep in mind that internal layout depends on the order. So the seating config may not be exactly what we're getting here.

silver_sky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155051#Comment_120155051

2x CCS sockets on each bus. I guess once MCS is available then that will start being added to buses instead.

Red Silurian

According to local news Limerick will be the first city to get these, longest route in Limerick is South Court to Kilmurry Lodge via William street at 26km so it's doable

https://www.limerickpost.ie/2022/06/13/limerick-will-be-first-irish-city-to-get-electric-buses/

bk

"€666000 each?"

Keep in mind that the NTA bus contracts now include full service and maintenance for most of the life of the bus. In the past we bought buses upfront for less, but then got burned with some very poor quality buses that needed a fortune in work. Now they do these sort of full service contracts that puts the responsibility back on the manufacturer. Any problems and they can just kick them back to the manufacturer to sort. Overall it has lead to our buses being better built and more reliable which is very important for public transport [1] and cheaper overall. I'd assume this contract now also includes the cost of maintaining the chargers, etc.

[1] Buses breaking down on the side of the road tends to put people off public transport. A sight that use to be queit regular over 20 years ago, but you rarely see nowadays.

"It's fine in our smaller places like Athlone or maybe Limerick but Dublin and perhaps Cork not so easy"

They will be rolling out over 60 single and double decker fully electric buses in Dublin before the summer. Work under way for the substation at the depot. They will be operating on the new O and N2 orbital routes.

As for range, folks should keep in mind, that most buses don't run all day. Most of the fleet is only out in Dublin during the morning and evening peak, over half the fleet park up in depots during the middle of the day and evening off peak hours. So in most cases there is the oppurtunity for two supercharges per day, not just overnight charging. Should be plenty for most routes, even in Dublin/Cork. Obviously they can continue to use the Diesel and Hybrid buses on the longest routes if need be. All buses in Dublin are equipped with GPS and RTPI, so they know exactly the distance travelled for every route and can use the electric buses accordingly.

Also keep in mind, it will take more then 11 years to replace the entire fleet with Electric buses, so plenty of time to take advantage of increasing battery density over the next decade which can then be used for longer routes in future.

"Strange place to put the batteries. It would make the centre of gravity in the bus worse than if they were in the floor which would seem like the logical place for them. Maybe it's a safety thing or something but it makes no sense to me having them in the roof."

City buses have to be low floor to allow accessibility to wheel chair users, buggies and people with disabilities. You might remember that old buses use to have steps up into them! They are all gone now and replaced by 100% low floor buses. And our buses even have a suspension system that allows them to lean even lower when needed.

All this means that you can't put the batteries in the floor as it makes the floor too tall and thus inaccessible. Thus the solution is to put the batteries in the roof of single decker buses. This is nothing new, there are tens of thousands of such battery buses running all over the world (loads in China) for the past decade with no issues.

It is a bit trickier on double deckers as you can't put them on the roof, would make them too tall and top heavy. Instead they are spreading the batteries out under seats and in the back of the bus. This is why BEV double deckers have taken longer to come to market then the single deckers.

unkel

Good stuff. Now where is that retard who ordered all those diesel hybrid buses for Dublin bus only a year or two ago? He needs to be shot. I guess we don't do that anymore, but at least some serious prison time. Several people will die because of that decision.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120162148#Comment_120162148

These new BEV Double Deckers from Wrightbus were only developed and announced in the past 12 months and the first models have only rolled off the production line in the past 2 months. They didn't exist three years ago when we ordered the hybrids, so clearly we couldn't have ordered them back then!

We have actually cut the hybrid order short, 220, rather then 600 originally planned, now that the BEV double deckers are available. Good news.

Three years ago our only options for DD's was either Diesel buses or Hybrids, no BEV DD had sufficient range and passenger capacity for our needs. That has obviously changed in the last few months with the release of this new model.

FYI We buy roughly a 100 new buses every single year and those 100 buses replace the oldest and dirtiest buses in the fleet. The 200+ hybrids we bought have replaced the oldest and dirtiest Euro 4 engine buses in the fleet. Very much a win for the environment.

unkel

@bk - "These new BEV Double Deckers from Wrightbus were only developed and announced in the past 12 months and the first models have only rolled off the production line in the past 2 months. They didn't exist three years ago when we ordered the hybrids, so clearly we couldn't have ordered them back then!"

If I remember right There were about half a million (!!!) fully electric buses operational in China when that decision was made. But oh no, in Ireland it was decided we should wait another generation and buy the "best of both worlds" 🙄 🙄 🙄 instead for now

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120162482#Comment_120162482

And as I’ve described like half a dozen times already! Most of those buses in China are single deckers.

Single deckers EV’s have been easy to do as you can just put the batteries on the roof. EV double deckers are much harder to do as you obviously can’t put the batteries on the roof.

There were some EV double deckers before this, but they were comprised by either having very short range or batteries taking up too much passenger space. Only this new model seems to get the balance right of decent range and decent passenger space.

It is really important that we maintain the capacity and reliability of our bus service. Nothing is more likely to put people off taking public transport and go back to their cars, technetium buses breaking down because their battery runs out or they can’t get on the bus because it is already full, due to their being less passenger space.

Keep in mind that even an old Diesel Euro 6 engine buses releases less NOX then a single Volkswagen Golf. 80 people on even a Diesel bus, never mind a Hybrid one, is a massive win, hell 80 people on a Diesel bus likely has far less green house emissions then even 80 EV cars!

So it is great that we are going EV bus now, but it is just as important that we make sure they are reliable.

unkel

Yeah the old official figures for emissions. We all know how reliable and trustworthy they are in real life. Diesel near people -> cancer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120162947#Comment_120162947

Have you seen the exhaust cleaning systems on Euro 5+ HGVs and buses? They are serious piece of kit and very tightly regulated unlike the cars that got away with cheating devices. In my experience as cyclist, Dublin Bus fleet seem very clean now. It was very different 10+ years ago. Good job, and even better now that the BEV double deckers are on the way.

The big problem are the old buses, many imported second hand from London, operated by smaller operators. They are often spewing out visible smoke and just plain stink. But even that's nothing compared to Irish Rail cancer mobiles. What a gas chamber the Connolly station is.