Estimation of Traction Energy Consumption of Urban Service Buses in an Intermediate Andean City

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to estimate the traction energy consumption of public transport buses in the urban sector of the city of Loja, Ecuador. Initially, with a data logger device, connected to the OBDII port, the speed and position variables of the transport units are acquired in real time, at a frequency of 1 Hz, during 25 round trips on 3 bus lines with the highest passenger flow; the effects of the slope profile are considered. To avoid information bias, 25 different HINO AK bus units, with different drivers, are monitored on full daily working days, where traffic is variable; different mass of the bus is defined in the three lines, based on historical data of the average number of passengers. Then, based on the fundamental theory of vehicle dynamics, the traction energy consumption of the buses is obtained in Matlab Simulink. For this purpose, a typical driving cycle (TDC) is de-fined, through a deterministic method, for both the outbound and the return trip of each line. The results highlight a higher traction energy consumption on line L8, with 50.36 kWh, where 52.43% is associated with slope resistance, 35.76% inertia resistance, 10.06% rolling resistance and 1.75% aerodynamic resistance. These findings represent a starting point for subsequent studies, in this Andean city, related to electromobility in mass transportation systems.