Ballymena-made Dublin electric buses stay idle in depot due to no chargers

New battery-electric buses made by Wrightbus in Ballymena for service in Dublin are still not operational due to the lack of proper charging points at the Irish depots.

The first of the Dublin Bus/Bus Éireann electric fleet order were delivered in July and were hoped to be ready of use immediately however a delay in installing the charging infrastructure and planning consent issues at the two Dublin Bus depots, Phibsborough and Summerhill, has led to the buses being held in storage or used for testing and training.

However, speaking to the local National Transport Authority (NTA), these issues have now been resolved and plans are on track to ensure the electric buses are deployed onto Dublin roads later this year on an incremental basis.

Separately, Bus Eireann is working on the electrification of their depot in Roxboro, Limerick.

A NTA spokesperson explained: “As part of the overall actions to address climate change, the NTA intends to transition its urban bus services to zero-emission bus fleet. The intention is that new zero-emission fleet (battery-electric) will replace the older diesel-powered fleet on an incremental basis, as the latter buses reach the end of their efficient operational life, generally about 12 years. In the case of Dublin, that transition starts this year and by 2032 the majority (c.85%) of the Dublin fleet will be zero-emission with a minority (c.15%) being low-emission hybrid diesel-electric vehicles. By 2035 these hybrid diesel-electric vehicles will also have been phased out and the fleet will be fully zero-emission.

“The urban bus fleet operating in the Dublin region is, and will continue to be, predominately composed of double deck buses. In June these vehicles received the final certification documentation from the manufacturer, which allows the vehicles to be registered and used on public roads – these buses could not be registered or used prior to this certification process. The process of registering those vehicles is now underway.

“Testing, commissioning plus driver familiarisation is now ongoing using the new vehicles, which will be charged for test/training purposes via the chargers already installed for the previously purchased hybrid diesel-electric buses. The testing/training phase will take about 3 months.

“A depot electrification project is underway to install multiple electric chargers in Summerhill and Phibsborough depots for the new electric fleet. While the contractor had programmed for all of these chargers to be installed and commissioned by the start of September, that installation is now delayed due to a planning consent issue for aspects of the Contractor’s design. That issue has now been resolved with an exemption for the installation granted at one of the depots being electrified (Summerhill) and a planning consent granted for the second depot (Phibsborough).

"Dublin Bus has been engaging with the contractor to minimise any resultant delay and it is still intended that the new electric buses will be brought into operational service later this year on an incremental basis – vehicles will be gradually swapped out on a week-by-week basis over about a three month period.”