Ottawa's electric buses have met expectations, city concludes

Four electric buses that were part of a pilot project havemet the City of Ottawa'sexpectations and the technology isindeed a goodalternative to diesel, staff conclude in a brief report goingbefore transit commission next week.

The New Flyer XE40 model electric buses had no problem handling the work scheduled to drivers operating the city's diesel buses over the past year, OC Transpo engineers found.

The buses have regularly travelled routes for longerthan 10 hours and more than200 kilometres, they said.

• Transit commission approves nearly $1B e-bus plan after 2nd look
• OC Transpo will get 100 fewer electric buses for $1B price tag

The results of that testing come after the City of Ottawaalready approveda multi-year, billion-dollar procurement of 350 electric buses to transform the OC Transpofleet and curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The city plansto buy26 vehicles this year, but not until the Toronto Transit Commission announces the winning bidder of its request for proposals for zero-emission buses.

The city plans to adopt the same model of vehicle.

• Toronto is buying over 300 new electric buses with help from the federal government

After some initial wafflingabout whether to pilot the technology at all, the previous city council ordered the fourbusesand then pledged to buyonly electric buses in 2021,before the local testing had begun.

Once the buses arrived, they were tested on streets without ridersfor a couple of months starting inDecember 2021.

The firstelectric bus then started carrying passengersin February2022. Over the past year, OC Transpo hasn'thad all four out consistently because it's been training operators, while also keeping the busesparked during the winter holidays.

Testing ran the gamut

Engineers studied various things, such as energy consumption, how far busescould go on a charge, and defects that would take oneout of service.

They described how the buses use more energy whenelectric heaters run during the fall and spring. When temperatures fall below 5 C, an auxiliary diesel heater kicks in.

"Temperature conditions can reduce the efficiency of the e-bus by as much as 24 per cent, but the e-buses still meet minimum distance requirements," they wrote.

The engineers simulated different passenger loads by placing containers of water on the bus seats. They found thata bus at maximumcapacity puts 15 per cent more demand on the traction motorthe biggest energy user on an e-bus and said they'd keep monitoring how passenger load affects efficiency.

OC Transpo has plug-in chargers for the test buses, as well astwo overhead pantograph chargers. Those ceilingsystems have had some failures, though at their power cabinet and not overhead, an issue the city has been trying to resolve with the supplier.

Engineers also performed a special winter test done during a snowstorm in January 2022, when nearly 50 centimetres of snow fell.

They got the buses to stop and start on several hills with limited plowing and no salt and reported the e-bus didn't get stuck.

As for drivers, the evaluation shows they're mostly satisfied but did find the steering wheel was smaller than what they're used to.

The reportgoes before the transit commission on May 11.