Image credit: Transdev Blazefield

ABB is to supply electric bus charging infrastructure for a fleet of Volvo electric buses serving the town of Harrogate in northern England. Three HVC 300P charging stations and an electricity substation sited at a bus station will be installed.

This is the first electric bus project in the UK that will use OppCharge for ‘opportunity charging,’ where buses are charged while they wait at the terminal bus stops equipped with fast-charging infrastructure.
Charging will take only three to six minutes, eliminating the need to wait for long charging periods. The fleet will be operated by Transdev Blazefield in accord with plans to reduce emissions and improve other aspects of bus travel. As well as enabling zero emission public transport, opportunity charging allows the size of batteries on board the electric buses to be reduced, which lowers the overall vehicle weight and improves energy efficiency of the bus network.

The buses will connect automatically to ABB’s HVC 300P chargers, which feature an overhead charging mast that charges via the buses’ on-board pantographs. A key advantage is that the HVC 300P units are compatible with the OppCharge interface, so they will be compatible with other brands and models of electric buses that use opportunity charging. The chargers are modular and can be upgraded to support 150 kW, 300 kW, 450 kW or 600 kW charging.