The secret of any successful large-scale conversion project starts with good planning. When it comes to school bus fleet electrification, many questions arise, and it can be hard to know where to start. In this article, we take a look at the main steps involved in planning a school bus fleet electrification project.
Before embarking on a project of this magnitude, it's best to have a clear and precise vision of your current and future needs. Put your short-, medium- and long-term vision on paper, then ask yourself the right questions. How many buses need to be replaced each year? What are my daily autonomy requirements? What will my future electrical needs be? This planning phase is essential and should be carried out well in advance, sometimes up to a year in advance, so as to put in place an effective transition plan that won't cause you any headaches!
Optimize your transition process
Every school bus operator has his or her own specific needs. At this stage, it's imperative to clearly identify the needs of your service and the reality in which your electric vehicle will operate. Identify the number of kilometers it will have to cover each day, how many times it will have to leave the garage each day, including stopping time at the garage and/or parking site, and the type and geography of the routes, whether they be in the city, in the country, on asphalt or gravel roads, on fairly flat terrain or with lots of hills, etc. Each element counts! Everything counts! Don't forget to check whether your electric vehicle will be used for long journeys, such as school outings, and whether your electrical system allows for recharging.
Create an efficient financial package
Once you've clearly identified the needs of your school bus fleet, it's time to plan the financial package for your electrification project and identify the various financing options available. There are two main cost categories to consider:
- Operating costs These include the costs of electricity, vehicle maintenance and recharging infrastructure, fuel for auxiliary heating, software licenses and real-time data access, training, insurance, etc.
- Capital costs These include the costs of acquiring vehicles, warranties and repair contracts, acquiring charging infrastructure, connecting to Hydro-Québec, reconfiguring the building, installing a new distribution system, updating maintenance tools and computers, replacing batteries, and so on.
Implementation of a pilot project
Last but not least is the implementation of your pilot project, which will enable you to carry out a retrospective analysis to correct the deployment strategy for your entire fleet. This test phase should first and foremost be planned and orchestrated in the same way as you would for a full fleet of electric buses. In this way, the pilot project will enable you to validate as many hypotheses as possible.
For more information, seeweb page and theguide Carrier+.
This project was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Quebec government, the Fondation Familiale Trottier, the Fonds Climat du Grand Montréal and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ. Propulsion Québec would also like to thank L'Accélérateur de transition and the team at WSP Canada for their essential contributions, as well as all the experts we met during the preparation of this guide.
