System-Level Validation of an Electric Bus Fleet Simulator

This paper demonstrates the potential of a developed simulation tool for electric vehicle systems to replicate the real life operational activity of a bus line using techno-economic studies. The system-level concept represents holistic view of the bus operation and charging infrastructure, including different operational conditions such as current traffic, stop frequencies and stopping times. The proposed simulation tool is built in a modular way, including modules for vehicle dynamics, routes, charging infrastructure and related conditions. The modules interact with various parameters in a simulation loop to illustrate the operation of electric vehicle systems. To evaluate the performance of the designed system tool a test simulation example of an actual bus line running in Helsinki, Finland is employed. The obtained results show that the simulated transient energy consumptions and powertrain power, as well as actualised bus schedules, are very close to the empirical measurements, which prove the efficiency of the tool and its great potential to simulate complex road transportation scenarios.