Canada Invests in Newmarket Electric Bus and Charging Network

Aug 16, 2019

As part of the ongoing PanCanadian Electric Bus Demonstration and Integration Trial, CUTRIC has announced a commitment of $956,338 from NRCan to Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution Ltd. to support a globally innovative utility-owned and operated overhead charging system for transit electrification.

This is the first time in North America that a local utility is owning and operating an on-route charging system for a public transit agency.

Newmarket is the leading utility in the Pan-Canadian Electric Bus Demonstration and Integration Trial: Phase I, which first launched at TransLink in Vancouver in April 2018 as part of a national initiative to advance zero emissions transit technology across Canada.

Spearheaded by the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC), the project has brought together an innovative consortium of utilities, manufacturers, transit agencies, cities, funding partners, and research teams to expand Canada’s capacity for globally innovative zero-carbon electric vehicle technologies.

Starting in 2019, Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution Ltd. will be purchasing, installing, operating and maintaining a high-powered 450kW charging system on behalf of York Region Transit. The charging system is designed to the OppCharge Protocol to ensure that it is interoperable with multiple makes and models of electric buses in the future.

CUTRIC will work with the utility to collect real-time data from the charger and up to six electric buses that plug into it over the next three years as part of a Canada-wide Electric Bus Big Data Trust, which CUTRIC is developing with municipal partners for launch in 2020. The Trust will allow transit agencies and cities to log into a cloud platform and view how e-chargers and e-buses operate in any given Canadian city at any point in time. It will allow publiclyowned utilities to do the same.

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