Special Session #6: IEEE VPPC 2024 Special Session on Electric Battery, Fuel Cell and Hybrid Buses

Co-chair: Paulo G. Pereirinha, Polytechnic of Coimbra and INESC Coimbra, Portugal
Co-chair: Josu Olmos Amondarain, IKERLAN Technology Research Centre, Spain

Abstract: The road transport decarbonization’s challenge is seen to be spearheaded by road public transport, due to its advantageous characteristics. However, fossil fuel public transportation contributes significantly to city pollution, and there is a growing search for proper solutions to these issues. Among the available alternative technologies, several studies have pointed out hybrid and full-electric buses as very valuable options, however, for decarbonizing the most demanding routes, fuel cell buses are also seen as an option. This is leading to an increasing demand from governments and cities followed by a growing effort from most bus manufacturers to offer competitive and suitable electric buses. Proposals using different battery chemistries, mostly based on lithium but not only, with different voltage levels, battery capacities and ranges, focused on night slow charge or fast and/or ultrafast opportunistic charge, cable or pantograph conducted or wireless charging systems, hybridization of the battery with energy storage systems as ultra-capacitors or hydrogen fuel cells, with the required energy management system, fleet management proposals and total cost of ownership analysis to evaluate the viability of the integration are appearing at an ever-increasing pace.

This special session is focused on addressing these questions, especially for full-electric buses (EB), of all sizes, but including also plug-in hybrid electric buses (PHEB), Fuel Cell Buses (FCB) and Hybrid Electric Buses (HEB).

 

Co-chair’s bio:

Paulo G. Pereirinha

Paulo G. Pereirinha received his PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal. Since 1995, he has been with the Polytechnic of Coimbra – Coimbra Institute of Engineering (IPC-ISEC), where he is currently a Coordinator Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering. His classes and research interests include electrical machines, electric vehicles, electromechanical drives, finite elements, and renewable energies, being (co)author of more than 110 papers on international journals and conferences.

Prof. Pereirinha is Senior Member of IEEE, chair of the Portuguese Chapter of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, VTS, and was General Chair of IEEE VPPC 2014, Publication Chair of VPPC 2015 and Award-Committee Chair of VPPC 2016. He is a member of the Vehicular Power Propulsion Standing Advisory Committee of the IEEE VTS. He is a researcher at INESC Coimbra and member of the Executive Board of the Portuguese Electric Vehicle Association, APVE. Seven times Evaluator of proposals to the European Commission for FP7, Horizon 2020, and Horizon Europe related to electric vehicles and its components, has done several technical advices for international public tenders for the acquisition of electric buses by the Coimbra Municipal Urban Transport Services and coordinates a national working group on direct current measuring in public electric vehicle fast chargers.

 

Josu Olmos Amondarain

Josu Olmos Amondarain received the B.Sc. degree in renewable energies engineering and the M.Sc. in control of smart grids and distributed generation from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, Spain) in 2017 and 2018, respectively. In 2022 he received the Ph.D. degree in applied engineering from the University of Mondragón (MU-MGEP, Spain). He has been working in the Energy Storage and Management department of Ikerlan Technology Research Centre (BRTA) since 2018, where he is participating in several industrial and research projects as a researcher and project manager. His main research interests include the integration of lithium-ion battery and fuel cell technologies in different mobility applications, the optimization of energy management strategies, and the development of state estimation and lifetime estimation algorithms for energy storage technologies, especially for heavy-duty applications (full electric and hybrid – diesel or fuel cell – buses and trains). He has been participating in VPPC every year since 2020, received the best paper award of the VPPC 2020 conference with the work “In-depth Life Cycle Cost Analysis of a Li-ion Based Hybrid Diesel-Electric Multiple Unit” and was Chair of a couple of Regular Sessions at VPPC 2022.