I know this article is about skoolies but the same idea could apply to all buses.
It shows promise but what happens in the winter when the heater fans are going full blast? How long will the battery last before the propulsion motor konks out under those conditions?
http://www.schoolbusfleet.com/article/713421/can-electric-school-buses-go-the-distance (http://www.schoolbusfleet.com/article/713421/can-electric-school-buses-go-the-distance)
Some years ago eBay was listing a Blue Bird TC2000 electric school bus from Beaumont CA. The ad said it needed new batteries - who knows how much a busload of batteries costs? I remember thinking at the time that using the A/C in the summer or the heaters in the winter would reduce the bus's range to only a few miles. I also wondered that if the roof were completely carpeted with PV panels would it would make any useful difference to the range - my 2kW of panels occupies about 22 feet of roof length, so it's conceivable that a bus could have up to about 4 kW of PV. However, even 4 kW won't go very far to charge a battery bank large enough to power a school bus any useful distance.
With modern battery technologies an electric small bus could be viable for predictable short distances, but I feel that an on-board generator back-up system is probably also necessary. Whether it's more cost-effective than a CNG-powered bus is debatable, but battery buses are just the thing for politicians to claim kudos for from an unquestioning public at election time.
John
Too many batteries if you want any kind of range. The solution that is being experimented now is using a micro turbine to create a constant 200hp of charging (turbines are very efficient running at near full speed at their designed horsepower). Then hill climbing can use the battery pack also. Good Luck, TomC
Or ... perhaps a good example of what happens when voters outnumber tax payers and school districts end up with way too much money. Other peoples money. Electric vehicles are probably OK in specific applications but the attempt to waste tax dollars playing around with all electric school buses is not a good idea.
Respectfully.
Yes indeed one can detect much appeasement to the greenies. Even though you need to use coal to generate the electricity to recharge these things. The solution obviously is 100% nuclear but the greenies run in the basement and scream and the very word.
A hybrid version is probably the best of both worlds right now and the hybrid idea is becoming a very proven idea but a long way to go before the good old internal combustion engine goes the way of the square wheel and 8 track.
100% electric buses may do well in very short range operations such as those buses that circulate around the ramp area and possibly the shuttles to the rental car lots as long as they have gasoline or diesel backup buses in the fleet.
Perhaps just a small amount of battery power can be used to wire the seats in order to keep the little monsters under control. :)
Always tickles me the electric cars are zero emissions but the electricity to charge them has emissions and who pays for the electric when they are plugged in away from home base.
Quote from: edvanland on June 20, 2017, 11:53:12 AM
Always tickles me the electric cars are zero emissions but the electricity to charge them has emissions and who pays for the electric when they are plugged in away from home base.
Hydro and solar generation are emission during production
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Quote from: CrabbyMilton on June 20, 2017, 09:30:35 AM
Perhaps just a small amount of battery power can be used to wire the seats in order to keep the little monsters under control. :)
Hands and feet securely chained to the seat with a hood to stop them screaming and spitting would work well too.
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Quote from: edvanland on June 20, 2017, 11:53:12 AM
Always tickles me the electric cars are zero emissions but the electricity to charge them has emissions and who pays for the electric when they are plugged in away from home base.
I'm amazed nobody has covered an electric care in solar panels so that over a few days or weeks it could recharge itself.
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Quote from: Zephod on June 20, 2017, 01:50:36 PM
I'm amazed nobody has covered an electric care in solar panels so that over a few days or weeks it could recharge itself.
If you Google you will find lots of examples of that, plus buses as below.
(https://i-invdn-com.akamaized.net/trkd-images/LYNXMPED0403L_L.jpg)
Stop-start transit-type buses on regular routes are the perfect candidate for being 100% electric because they can make full use of both regenerative braking and, with the necessary infrastructure, inductive charging at every bus stop. There is at least one such system already in operation in the UK where I believe the buses also run driverless in dedicated lanes for some parts of their journey. My own city has quite a big fleet of electric buses as well, although despite seeing them every day I'm not sure quite how 'electric' they really are (I've always assumed they were actually hybrids like the new Routemasters etc)
Jeremy
This article about the buses in my local city refers to the "first all-electric bus park & ride service", but whether that means the buses themselves are all-electric I'm not entirely sure
http://www.nottinghampost.com/new-3-2m-electric-buses-help-make-nottingham-a-world-leader-in-public-transport-says-mp/story-29989124-detail/story.html (http://www.nottinghampost.com/new-3-2m-electric-buses-help-make-nottingham-a-world-leader-in-public-transport-says-mp/story-29989124-detail/story.html)
Jeremy
Quote from: TomC on June 20, 2017, 08:53:33 AM
Too many batteries if you want any kind of range. The solution that is being experimented now is using a micro turbine to create a constant 200hp of charging (turbines are very efficient running at near full speed at their designed horsepower). Then hill climbing can use the battery pack also. Good Luck, TomC
Do you mean micro turbine as in a smaller jet engine, or micro turbine as in the micro wind/heat turbines?
Quote from: Zephod on June 20, 2017, 01:50:36 PM
I'm amazed nobody has covered an electric care in solar panels so that over a few days or weeks it could recharge itself.
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At most you could fit only a few hundred watts of PV on a car (and it would look mighty weird). If you could shoehorn 370 watts of panels on, that's only half a horsepower, and that's ignoring efficiency losses and less-than-sunny days. A fit cyclist can develop more than that. My garbage disposer is more powerful than that. Half a horsepower is not even enough to power the car's A/C. Maybe you could run the windshield wipers on that much power, but if it were raining you wouldn't be producing any PV power anyway.
If it takes days or weeks to recharge an electric car from solar, then that kinda makes the car completely bloody useless for all the time it's sitting there quietly absorbing its fill of electrons. Perhaps one could temporarily repurpose it as a chicken coop or a dog kennel or something else, but as a car it would be a non-starter, literally.
I've had folk look at the two thousand watts of panels on the roof of my bus and they ask me "So now you can power the bus just from solar?" They seem genuinely surprised when I tell them that it doesn't quite work that way. With all the power I have, it's still only the equivalent of less than three horsepower. My MT42 starter motor is several times more powerful than that.
John
Quote from: Iceni John on June 20, 2017, 04:06:26 PM
At most you could fit only a few hundred watts of PV on a car (and it would look mighty weird). If you could shoehorn 370 watts of panels on, that's only half a horsepower, and that's ignoring efficiency losses and less-than-sunny days. A fit cyclist can develop more than that. My garbage disposer is more powerful than that. Half a horsepower is not even enough to power the car's A/C. Maybe you could run the windshield wipers on that much power, but if it were raining you wouldn't be producing any PV power anyway.
If it takes days or weeks to recharge an electric car from solar, then that kinda makes the car completely bloody useless for all the time it's sitting there quietly absorbing its fill of electrons. Perhaps one could temporarily repurpose it as a chicken coop or a dog kennel or something else, but as a car it would be a non-starter, literally.
I've had folk look at the two thousand watts of panels on the roof of my bus and they ask me "So now you can power the bus just from solar?" They seem genuinely surprised when I tell them that it doesn't quite work that way. With all the power I have, it's still only the equivalent of less than three horsepower. My MT42 starter motor is several times more powerful than that.
John
I think you're a little harsh on solar power. Even a little solar panel adds some charge. Even if it adds only a couple of miles to the Daily range, it's still worth doing.
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Quote from: Zephod on June 20, 2017, 04:16:01 PM
I think you're a little harsh on solar power. Even a little solar panel adds some charge. Even if it adds only a couple of miles to the Daily range, it's still worth doing.
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At work, we tried solar on a golf cart. We took a flexible panel and covered the entire roof on a 4 seater. We then directed everyone to not hook it up to the charger and to just park it in the sun. I do not remember the specs. No one ever knew whether it added anything because the cart was always dead. We let the project go until we killed every battery on that cart. Haven't messed with solar powered carts since. I have threatened to try and retrofit a Prius style solar A/C setup on to the roof of my Suburban, but I haven't yet.
Quote from: Zephod on June 20, 2017, 04:16:01 PM
I think you're a little harsh on solar power. Even a little solar panel adds some charge. Even if it adds only a couple of miles to the Daily range, it's still worth doing.
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I don't think I'm being harsh on solar power generally, or on my bus's solar installation. I'm just being realistic. I'll be the first to say what it cannot do, or what its shortcomings are. Even after spending a fair chunk of my hard-earned money on it, I won't be expecting it to do more than I intended it to do in the first place. For me, solar is just a tool, a means to an end. There's no magic or miracles - it's just science, pure and simple, and like anything else it has its limits. For me however it's worth it for the benefits it will give me for my intended usage. For other folk with different expectations, solar is probably not a realistic option.
John
I shot a Chevy convention in LV for Chevy dealers, they had a fleet of 10 of their small suvs with electric power run by a hydrogen cumbustion engine, as in electromotive locomotive power, the general manager, a nice guy, now at Cadillac, said the pressuure from the oil companies was a tremendous, and starting a new hydrogen delivery system with those companies against it was insurmountable...
Quote from: Iceni John on June 20, 2017, 08:54:08 PM
I don't think I'm being harsh on solar power generally, or on my bus's solar installation. I'm just being realistic. I'll be the first to say what it cannot do, or what its shortcomings are. Even after spending a fair chunk of my hard-earned money on it, I won't be expecting it to do more than I intended it to do in the first place. For me, solar is just a tool, a means to an end. There's no magic or miracles - it's just science, pure and simple, and like anything else it has its limits. For me however it's worth it for the benefits it will give me for my intended usage. For other folk with different expectations, solar is probably not a realistic option.
John
People seem to be dead against my solar setup but it works pretty well. My two 10W panels provide plenty power for my twin extraction fans. In winter the fans are off for longer than they're on but that's because there's less daylight. They still work just fine. I expect the same from my front panel which will power an induction fan and siphon off surplus power to charge a 14ah battery bank.
I have a feeling many people expect to be able to run everything off solar without deciding what they really, truly need.
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Quote from: J_E on June 20, 2017, 04:23:22 PM
At work, we tried solar on a golf cart. We took a flexible panel and covered the entire roof on a 4 seater. We then directed everyone to not hook it up to the charger and to just park it in the sun. I do not remember the specs. No one ever knew whether it added anything because the cart was always dead. We let the project go until we killed every battery on that cart. Haven't messed with solar powered carts since. I have threatened to try and retrofit a Prius style solar A/C setup on to the roof of my Suburban, but I haven't yet.
Sounds like something was amiss with the setup.
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Quote from: lvmci on June 21, 2017, 07:06:19 AM
I shot a Chevy convention in LV for Chevy dealers, they had a fleet of 10 of their small suvs with electric power run by a hydrogen cumbustion engine, as in electromotive locomotive power, the general manager, a nice guy, now at Cadillac, said the pressuure from the oil companies was a tremendous, and starting a new hydrogen delivery system with those companies against it was insurmountable...
And perhaps at least as important, where would you get the hydrogen from? It's the most common element in the Universe and every high school student knows how it can be simply extracted from water by electrolysis - but as yet the large-scale industrial process doesn't exist that will generate/extract either the sort of quantities of hydrogen that you'd need for it to become a widespread fuel, or even a way of producing it that doesn't rely on large amounts of power being
consumed by the production process.
Regarding solar, absolutely, people see news stories about solar challenge buggies racing across the Australian outback, or (super-high-altitude) solar-powered aircraft flying around the world, and they get a completely false impression about the amount of power a solar panel can produce, and the things it can be used to drive. Mind you, cumulatively it does really build-up - earlier this year it was announced that, for the first time since the industrial revolution, wind and solar power (plus the usual nuclear) had met all the UK's power needs for a day and no coal or gas had been burned at all. It's happened two or three times again since then and it's already 'old news' which is barely reported. So covering you car, or even your bus, in solar panels won't achieve very much at all, but if you have a few million house roofs covered in panels and all tied together it begins to add-up to something worthwhile
Jeremy
Quote from: Jeremy on June 21, 2017, 04:10:15 PM
And perhaps at least as important, where would you get the hydrogen from? It's the most common element in the Universe and every high school student knows how it can be simply extracted from water by electrolysis - but as yet the large-scale industrial process doesn't exist that will generate/extract either the sort of quantities of hydrogen that you'd need for it to become a widespread fuel, or even a way of producing it that doesn't rely on large amounts of power being consumed by the production process.
Regarding solar, absolutely, people see news stories about solar challenge buggies racing across the Australian outback, or (super-high-altitude) solar-powered aircraft flying around the world, and they get a completely false impression about the amount of power a solar panel can produce, and the things it can be used to drive. Mind you, cumulatively it does really build-up - earlier this year it was announced that, for the first time since the industrial revolution, wind and solar power (plus the usual nuclear) had met all the UK's power needs for a day and no coal or gas had been burned at all. It's happened two or three times again since then and it's already 'old news' which is barely reported. So covering you car, or even your bus, in solar panels won't achieve very much at all, but if you have a few million house roofs covered in panels and all tied together it begins to add-up to something worthwhile
Jeremy
sure...but who will accept the blame when all of the oxygen and shade production is decreased proportionally ;D >:( ;D
Quote from: eagle19952 on June 21, 2017, 05:24:23 PM
sure...but who will accept the blame when all of the oxygen and shade production is decreased proportionally ;D >:( ;D
Who else? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40363390 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40363390)
'Nuff said.
John
Quote from: Iceni John on June 21, 2017, 09:58:11 PM
Who else? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40363390 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40363390)
'Nuff said.
John
shoulda known that answer...
the latest proposal has him putting a 2% levy on all funds transfers made by aliens/immigrants to banks and family in all of South and Central America... it was suggested that billions a year is sent home by illegals. that would have Latinos paying...
I suggested to him that the Chevy dealers could have hydrogen fuel stations, they would get those vehicles back at their stores every week or so, to sell them batteries and tires. Turns out Honda had a hydrogen fueling station at the CNG fueling station, because Honda had given two of their hydrogen powered Fit models as an experiment, to the city to beta test in LV...