E-BUSES: Confed Line-Type Fiasco With Little Payback
The evidence is piling up on e-buses.
Hydro Ottawa says it needs more capacity to serve a growing city.
Hydro Quebec says it is running out of capacity. Hard to believe but true. The province that made Hydro Quebec a big part of its industrial strategy and which boasted huge amounts of extra capacity, now says it is in a squeeze.
Some areas of North America are experiencing brown-outs because of a lack of capacity.
It appears, that as society increasingly electrifies, capacity is a problem. Locally, nationally and internationally.
OC Transpo was reluctant to release much information on the fuel to charge e-buses. Of course, that is electricity. But what makes the electricity? Giant natural-gas generators that could light a city the size of Brockville.
Why such big generators? Well, check above. Capacity, especially with Hydro Ottawa, is getting tight. The last thing Hydro needs is to charge a fleet of e-buses.
So it is becoming increasingly clear, given the Hydro capacity problems locally and huge size of the natural-gas generators, that those buses will run mostly on natural-gas-created electricity. The size of those generators is no back-up system. That looks as though natural gas is the primary source of creating electricity to charge those $1 billion of buses.
Add to this the problem with batteries in cold and very hot weather plus reliability woes that I hear from inside city hall and this looks like a fiasco on the scale of the Confederation Line. It’s one more step in completing the destruction of Ottawa’s transit system.
And to clean up the environment these buses you say? A very small win. Natural gas produces about 25 per cent fewer greenhouse gases than diesel. All this huge spending to get a minute improvement in the world climate.
Big spending … little payback.
What council did was to think as far as electricity is cleaner than diesel. But when you throw natural gas into the equation, not very much improvement. How could council and staff miss on that one. You buy electric buses without checking on electricity capacity.
Heads should roll but they won’t because city hall is prepared to accept huge mistakes due to few consequences from council or the public. No matter what they do wrong on Laurier Avenue, the tax money keeps rolling in.
Ken Gray
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In the Fortune 500’s 2023 list of biggest companies in North America (read USA), 4 of the top 16 companies listed, beginning with Exxon Mobil at number 3 (up from number 4 in 2022), were big oil. In the 2024 list the same 4 companies were still among the top 26 with Exxon Mobil slipping to number 7. Let’s face it, big oil isn’t disappearing anytime soon. I’m sure executives from those companies as well as investors would be happy to read Ken’s synopsis.
Sorry, Ken, I’m not impressed. If we want to transition to an electric world someone has to start. The city and OC Transpo stepped up. But this is a ‘transition’ so everything is not in place yet and some parts may move more quickly than others. In the meantime you have to cover the systemic deficits.
Electric buses ARE the future. We’ll get there eventually. In the meantime one-quarter of the GHG is a start and we’re on the path to 100% savings.
I’m afraid, if you remove your ‘Ottawa can’t get anything right’ from the article the rest doesn’t hold up.
BTW, did you know that the Ottawa Hospital is putting a similar gas generating plant into the new hospital? 8 MW. And this is for ‘peak shaving’ not transit.
It’s really curious that the city is buying two different makes of buses with similar specifications. I’ve been involved in fleet purchases before and NEVER have I seen any organization but two different manufacturers of vehicles to serve the same purpose. Commonality is essential for lower costs, common training and parts. Each technician has to be trained in two different bus systems, likely needing 2 different manufacturers certifications. Very strange
The fact that renewables and storage is now cheaper than Fossil Gas, it is solely on the city and Ottawa hydro to step up. Every city building should have solar, storage should be planned on city land, and windmills should be planned.(We recently had lunch under a windmill and the poplar trees 100 metres away were noiser). Why using a generator is even a “idea” tells me those decision-making people need to retire and enjoy their OAP and CPP.
I have a dream! I have a dream of a real pay as it goes transit system! I dream of buses shielded in solar panels wrapped-around. A mobile panel farm. Think of it. Power by (sunny) day. Then – free fuel for dark days and night. Add: buses with wind generators on the roofs – aided of course (a little) by the speed of the buses (which is variable)(when they are running). Why not seats on the buses that recycle the seat heat? (You know what I’m talking about). And here’s a break through. No more ticket takers or pay apps! Just turnstiles in the stations and on the buses and trains that work as power generators. Passengers who operate the pedals and hand cranks while just sitting and doing nothing else will add to the generator input – a fare kickback depending on output. And on another (likely very profitable) tangent……how about station and on-bus/train lotteries: Will the bus/train arrive on time? Will it arrive at all? Will there be a break-down? Will it go off the tracks?
I think with all this human effort we can balance the transit budget. It will just take good thoughts, good work and cooperation. Who’s with me?
Jake:
I understand your position. Were I building LRT (a frightening thought), I would have put a huge windmill on every station possible. Or solar panels. At least they could have provided some heat for the stations. Maybe not enough, but some.
People are running away from electric cars because they are inconvenient and their range is problematic. I’m hearing the electric buses are having repair problems.
Transitions usual occur at city hall each century. You buy a new model of a car, you are part of a test group. That’s trouble. Didn’t you see the lessons from LRT? So too Ottawa and its buses.
There is ideology and reality. Look at the examples in Norway and Minnesota. Disaster. Our transit system is in crisis and it is not time to be experimenting. A diesel bus is much more efficient than many cars. When electric becomes practical, which I doubt, then we should jump in.
I feel, for what it is worth, that hydrogen is the future but it is a way off. That said, you can buy a hydrogen car off the lot now at Toyota dealers.
We’ve seen how invariably poorly the city is with big projects … and medium-sized projects.
This city doesn’t have the competence to pull light rail and e-buses off. They’ve proven that. They can’t get good people to come here because of their ethical and competence problems. Will this crew pull off e-buses? Not a chance. And our councillors are lost because they came into a Watson culture that was about PR, not good governance.
I see no possibility this e-bus initiative will work. Natural gas to charge electric. Impossibly bad judgment.
That will go on. Sorry, I wish it weren’t true.
Buy electric buses in our climate? Good luck.
cheers
kgray
They are building 2 x battery storage facilities, one south of Ottawa, and one west of Ottawa, just upwind of Ottawa and the Britannia water treatment plant. I’m a bit nervous about these as 3 caught on fire in New York, 1 of which caused a “shelter in place” order. Two burned for days but one only burned for 1 day, as it had a superior fire suppression system that the others didn’t. NY is looking at bringing in legislation mandating better fire suppression systems – something Ontario doesn’t seem to have with these new technologies. When I see companies who have never done this before, saying it will be the biggest storage unit in Canada, I think it’s ok to be a bit nervous.
One of the silent issues is the axle weight of the electric buses are far more than traditional diesel buses, and the damage they cause to roads is significant, exceeding the load restrictions of city streets and bridges. Buses often already have exemptions to the road restrictions, but the weight of the new buses are so much more, the damage would be even more pronounced. Electric garbage trucks are coming soon, and they are actually much worse.
I always think about the two parts of the story that almost nobody talks about with battery technology in electric vehicles. You’ve touched on one with this story Ken. Yes, we are making improvements on electrical capacity and renewables are an increasingly large part of the electricity mix, but the remainder of that mix will have to be nuclear if we’re to be eliminating as much GHG as we can. Nuclear scares the daylights out of me (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc).
The other aspect is mining. All that lithium has to come from somewhere and it can be argued that the environmental impacts of mining the lithium do not outweigh the battery improvements. One ton of Lithium requires 2 million liters of water, and producing a 1,000 pound battery for an electric car produces 70% more CO2 than producing a regular car (this is just production, not overall lifespan of the vehicles). Bolivia and Chile are being devastated by water shortages and the local flora and fauna are losing their natural environment.
Combine all that with the fact that we’re not going to be able to mine enough lithium to meet future demand at the current rates, and something has to give. Many have suggested alternative battery tech like iron and silicon which are both easier to mine, but the battery tech for those isn’t there yet.
For those wondering where I’m getting my sources, I’ve been looking at this for a few years now but a simple google search and you can find all this in about 5 minutes of reading.
Nicholas, you are providing an insight that too few wish to contemplate.
Too many people think one step out (e.g. electric transportation), but choose not to contemplate the derivative challenges. The what/where/when of the power generation required to charge these vehicles. The what/where/when of the material (a much wider array than just lithium) required to generate and store the energy.
The derivative impacts of ‘collecting’ the necessary materials on the environment. Not the environment described by philosopher kings and queens, citing big picture numbers. No, the impact on the local environments, which are felt by the local inhabitants, and those who live downstream.
Complex problems are not solved with simple solutions. Never have been, never will be … except by those who lack the depth of knowledge to understand the complexity of the challenges.