Electrification of public bus transport under the usage of electricity generated by renewables

Shrinking reserves of natural resources as well as incisive environmental pollution oblige humanity to rethink its generally favored propulsion concept: in the last decade electro-mobility as a refurbished technology gained greater significance once more. Due to political course setting, many German cities are testing Electric Vehicles (EV) especially in public bus transport. To get to the bottom of an electromobile operating public transport system and to simplify decision making concerning the strategic lineup, simulations are a cost-effective way to deliver outlooks and to go through various system configurations. In this work we present an approach to simulate the power consumption characteristics of electric buses in line operation. Due to accurate depiction of the heating and cooling demand, the model is capable to generate seasonal charging profiles of EVs in high resolution. Comparing these to power generation profiles of fluctuating renewable energy sources this paper discusses which degrees of freedom are incorporated in the configuration of an electric driven public bus system to enhance simultaneity of power production and consumption in order to guarantee an emission-free operation. Results show that the energy demand of electric buses is heavily influenced by temperature variations and that synchronicity of power generation and consumption on a completely renewable powered bus route over a full year is given at an average of 37.0 % for photovoltaic (PV) systems and 41.3 % for wind turbines.