ACE extends monitoring project with RET

Last year, ACE took part in a monitoring project of the e-Busz, that was converted by e-Traction from diesel-Hybride to battery electric. Now, ACE continues and extends the monitoring activities in a project with the RET in Rotterdam. The project will consist of monitoring, analyzing and reporting of about 50 electrified city busses, and will start in September 2020. The monitoring will be carried out on several types of busses from different manufacturers and/or with different types of drive-systems, a/o the VDL Citea Electric, the e-Busz and the Van Hool Hydrogen fuel cell electric bus.

ACE is going to collect different data from the busses, such as: 

  • The kilometers driven on the different lines 
  • Grid to wheel energy use depending on driving and climate conditions
  • Battery behavior and health over the seasons and in time.

The next step will be verifying the data coming from the busses themselves. In particular, the data that is important for the success of the research. One of the questions is whether the source data match the real data. This can be researched by monitoring busses onboard, which can be compared to the on-line ViriCiti data. Once the data collection is done, the execution of the analyses can take place. The RET asks total comparison analyses of the busses on energy consumption/efficiency, battery status, charging, and electricity costs.  

Involved parties, besides ACE and RET are ViriCiti that provides the onboard tools that are needed to get the data and VDL, e-Traction and Van Hool who provide technical configuration information of the busses. 

Frank Rieck, head R&D at ACE: “We are very proud to continue the collaboration with those parties in this monitoring project. We also arranged an internship for a bachelor Automotive student from Rotterdam University, who will manage the Professional Monitoring work, in which students of the Fontys University will do the analyses and for which HAN University will develop an additional data management tool.”