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Biggest-ever demo of fuel cell buses
The 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Raising the Bar for Sustainability
The Olympic Games have always been the world’s pre-eminent display of the best in human athletic achievement, and the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada will be no different. What is different is the determination of the organizers to also make the Vancouver Games a showpiece of sustainability. In fact, their goal is to make these the greenest Games ever.
The 2010 Winter Games will highlight dozens of Canadian-made clean energy solutions, including a fleet of 20 fuel cell electric buses that will run as part of the public transit fleet in Whistler, where the Games’ alpine events will be held. The buses emit no greenhouse gases, and are more energy efficient than diesel buses with internal combustion engines.
The Canadian demonstration will be the largest-ever fleet of fuel cell buses to operate in a single location.
Built by New Flyer Industries of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the buses feature Canadian technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells from Ballard in Burnaby, B.C. and hydrogen storage from Dynetek Industries of Calgary, Alberta. Hydrogen fuel will be supplied by Air Liquide Canada of Montréal, Quebec.
The 20 buses will run as part of Whistler’s municipal fleet, which normally numbers around 30 but will grow to 135 during the Games. Joanna Morton, media relations officer for BC Transit, which owns and operates the buses, says that apart from a “fuel cell powered” sign on the side of the bus, the only difference passengers may notice is a smoother, quieter ride. “With electric drive, you have immediate torque pulling away from stops and accelerating, so the response is instantaneous,” she says.
The fuel cell buses were a perfect match for the sustainability theme of the 2010 Olympics. That theme is built into every aspect of the Games, from green building standards in the Olympic villages to biodegradable soaps at competition venues.
“I think it’s a very exciting idea,” says Anne Duffy, corporate sustainability officer for VANOC, the organizing committee for the Games. “Mainly because it’s a practical example that people can see. It makes it a lot more real when you can ride a bus that’s fuelled by hydrogen fuel cells.”
The buses are expected to produce a total greenhouse gas savings of 62 percent over regular diesel buses. The savings are based on a comparison of the entire life cycle of hydrogen versus diesel fuel — from creation to transportation. Just as diesel fuel is shipped for use, so hydrogen will be transported to Whistler, since local supply isn’t ready to meet the demands of 20 buses in daily service. “So even though the fuel supply isn’t available in Western Canada for a fleet of this size, there are still big wins in greenhouse gas savings,” says Ms. Morton.
After the athletes have gone home, the buses will stay on as the backbone of the Whistler transit fleet. The goal is to evaluate fuel cell technology to ensure it can meet the long-term service demand. "It has to meet both the operating effectiveness test and the cost effectiveness test," says Ms. Morton.
Weathering a Canadian winter
The Olympics alone will be a major test for the fuel cell buses, which will operate for up to 22 hours per day in cold winter conditions. To ensure a problem-free ride, a prototype bus was put through cold temperature tests at Canada’s National Research Council Centre for Surface Transportation Technology (NRC-CSTT) in Ottawa.
NRC subjected the bus to -20° C temperatures and tested the performance of the fuel cell and other components such as heating, ventilation and defrosting. “We need to have confidence that the bus is operable in a cold climate, and we need to understand how the battery and the fuel cell electric drive perform when it’s -20° C,” says Ms. Morton. “It was important that the fuel cell technology provide not only enough power for the bus to operate smoothly, but also enough heat, “so that our passengers can stay safe and warm,” she adds.
