Powering the drive to electric buses

Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s and member of ePOWER Suzan Eren says innovations in power electronics is key to electrifying 5,000 transit buses. (University Communications)

The Centre for Energy and Power Electronics Research (ePower) at Queen’s University is part of a new cluster of post-secondary institutions receiving funding from the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) to pursue battery electric bus research. CUTRIC is contributing $2.6 million in funding to help achieve the federal government’s ambitious goal of electrifying 5,000 transit buses.

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The funding, along with an additional $132,500 from federal MITACS industrial research program, will support innovative low-carbon and smart mobility research projects at Queen’s University, OCAD University, University of Windsor, and Ontario Tech University, which form CUTRIC’s National Academic Committee on Zero-Emissions Buses (NAC-ZEB).

This work will address the challenges faced by electric buses and help us realize the goal of making them a transit standard.

Suzan Eren, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s and a member of ePOWER, and her team are working to optimize the powertrain used in heavy-duty electric buses to pave the way for practical and efficient next-generation electric buses.

“The key technology of this project is innovations in power electronics to revolutionize the design of a new powertrain architecture,” Dr. Eren says. “This work will address the challenges faced by electric buses and help us realize the goal of making them a transit standard.”

This announcement builds on approximately $16 million in federal funding already awarded to the City of Brampton, TransLink, York Region Transit, and Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution Ltd. through Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) to help launch the Pan-Canadian Electric Bus Demonstration & Integration Trial: Phase I.

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