Electric vehicles are smooth and quiet for passengers and drivers, and eliminate a major source of nitric oxide, carbon dioxide and noise pollution from our communities. But can electric buses tackle Australian routes in Australian conditions? And what charging infrastructure is required to service a depot’s buses? An analytics platform supporting Australia’s largest electric bus fleet pilot project seeks to answer these questions.

Researchers from the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program have developed a data driven tool for any bus route and depot in Australia. The RouteZero tool leverages real data and is available for free online at https://routezero.cecs.anu.edu.au/ (for advanced applications for buses or other fleet vehicles please get in touch).

The tool provides insights for individual routes and depots, as well as the impacts of electrification at a region scale. For metropolitan Sydney, for instance, the electrification of all timetabled bus routes is found to require up to 945 MWh a day of electricity.

Instructions on using RouteZero and the science behind the model are detailed in a report published by ARENA (https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/routezero-user-guide-and-knowledge-sharing-report/).

RouteZero has been made possible with funding support from ARENA and the collaboration of Zenobe, Transgrid and Transport for NSW.