Electrification of Public Transport with Fast Charging in Traffic Congested Cities

The utility of energy efficiency and zero-emission of electric vehicles leads the way to electrify the urban public transport bus networks in many cities around the world. The purpose of this paper is to study the operational feasibility of transition the existing conventional combustion bus fleet to Electric bus fleet. The analysis is based on the data of the bus operation in Bangkok, Thailand. Traffic congestion as occurred in Bangkok is considered in the analysis. This research is focused on Fast charging technology of Electric vehicles. Instead of slow-charging overnight, Fast-charging is used during the regular layover time of the bus operation which is called Opportunity charging. The opportunity charging allows to extend the driving range of the electric buses which is a prominent problem of electric vehicles. The result stipulates the smallest number of batteries needed to meet the route requirement which come up with outstanding efficiency in energy consumption and more spacing of bus configuration. Rather than focusing on maximizing driving range, the outcome could lead to the optimization between on-buses energy storage and available charging opportunities: