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How Solar-Powered Buses Are Improving Transport in South Africa

South Africa Introduces Solar-Powered BusesEvery year, the talk of rising carbon emissions and how to combat rising carbon emissions surfaces. Many organizations have proposed various solutions; however, alternative solutions to fossil fuels are never viable due to the financial impact on consumers. Combating carbon emissions will require everyone, from the average consumer to companies, to make small changes in order to make the world a better place. Golden Arrow, a South African bus company based in Cape Town, is working to make a difference by introducing solar-powered buses, which make transport affordable while helping the environment.

South Africa and Bus Transportation

Currently, nearly 21.1% of all South African households rely on buses for transportation. Additionally, nearly one million South Africans use the bus to get to and from work. However, there are numerous problems plaguing the bus transportation system in South Africa currently.

Right now, rural South Africans do not get access to bus transportation because buses do not cover certain routes. As such, these groups are required to walk long distances to reach their destinations. In contrast, bus transportation in South Africa is generally considered safer than other modes of transportation such as trains and minibus taxis. This may mean that consumers will often compromise on areas such as reliability and efficiency as bus transportation will often take very long periods of time to go to and from a destination.

Additionally, many of the buses are worn down and poorly maintained. In addition, fuel costs are very high to maintain for public busing. Access to affordable fuel or alternatives to fossil fuels must be necessary in order for bus transportation in South Africa to be reliable. Typically, fuel for buses often costs 10% to even 40% of total operating costs.

The Procedure of Launching the Electric Buses

In July 2021, Golden Arrow launched two solar panel-powered buses that will be fully functional. Golden Arrow designed the buses to carry passengers like any other fossil fuel-powered bus.

As part of its three-step plan, Golden Arrow installed a small-scale solar power system at their depot to power the bus. The second and third parts of the program involved expanding the solar power system by adding another 2,500 solar panels on another Golden Arrow depot. Next, the uYilo e-mobility program funded the electric bus testing. The trial runs showed that the buses could run for 300 kilometers without recharging. This would potentially help many rural passengers gain access to the public bus transportation system. It ran two buses, one with no passengers and another with sandbags equivalent to the weight of 44 people.

However, the experiment itself was a great success, showing there is much to learn about solar-powered buses. This includes electricity usage under different conditions, charge time between trips, maintenance needs and battery degradation.

Golden Arrow’s History in Cape Town

Golden Arrow transports 250,000 passengers every day. These two electric buses will help transport many lower-income constituents, as the Metro in the local Cape Town area stopped functioning. This will help many people get to and from their jobs and will also be environmentally friendly.

Overall, Golden Arrow’s solar-powered buses program has found a balance between making environmentally friendly transportation options that have positive impacts on the environment while making it affordable for the average everyday worker in Cape Town.

– Matthew Port Louis
Photo: Flickr

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Clean Energy Buses in South Africa

Solar energy buses in South AfricaLately, pollution throughout the world has risen due to the effects of climate change, fossil fuels and the emittance of a handful of harmful chemicals in order for different countries to keep running. Ever since the late 1990s, renewable energy use on the African continent has been dropping, moving from a high of 74% in 1994 to 70% in 2015. Even in more prominent countries like Ghana, the 2015 rate was at a relatively small 41%. Some countries barely creep over 1%.

In the days of a global pandemic and climate change creeping up on the world, the need to utilize more natural forms of energy to power the world has become preeminent. And in South Africa, major steps are being taken, starting with their public transportation using clean energy buses.

Where Golden Arrow Comes In

In July 2021, Golden Arrow, one of the major organizations that provide public transportation for people in Cape Town, South Africa, has put out two fully electric buses to help transport individuals without using types of energy that are harmful to the air and to the world as a whole. According to IT News Africa, Golden Arrow began its renewable energy project back in 2016, and this project is in collaboration with the bus company, the city of Cape Town and New Southern Energy, a construction company based in South Africa that helps make solar energy products.

These clean energy buses in South Africa are expected to be run from Retreat all the way to Cape Town, which will be very convenient for people in the area due to the collapse of train services in the metro ran by MetroRail.

Due to this collapse of services, caused by poor conditions, looting and attacks from civilians, many people that worked for MetroRail have lost their jobs in an area where unemployment is already at an all-time high. The French Agency of Development (AFD), highlights that young people represent more than half of the unemployed population in Africa, or 60% to be exact. However, Golden Arrow has increased its services recently around the time these buses were introduced, so for some people in search of a job, bus operations might alleviate unemployment.

Launching the Effort

The program of launching these vehicles, according to IT News Africa, did not involve the vehicles themselves; it started from the ground up. Golden Arrow installed a small solar-powered system in one of its main vehicle depots in Epping, a small town within Cape Town. Then, in the next two phases of the program, it expanded its solar power capabilities by installing 2,500 panels at its Multimech stop. Then, with the success of these solar systems, it was time to test it out on the buses.

Two types of tests were done with the clean energy buses in South Africa, according to Techinafrica. One bus was completely empty, and the other had sandbags filled in the bus that simulated the weights of different passengers — 44 of them to be exact. For a few months, the team at Golden Arrow has been running those tests, becoming excited with the progress being made as Gideon Neethling, an engineer for Golden Arrow, stated, “Testing these vehicles has been a joy for everyone who is part of the project. Each time we carry out a new test or reach a new milestone, the level of excitement increases further.”

Considering the Future

According to Oxfam, an estimated 633 million people in Africa are living without access to electricity, and almost 800 million people are cooking food with old cookstoves, which is deemed not safe. With renewable energy use on a decline in Africa, these clean energy buses in South Africa stand to positively benefit the country and the continent as a whole. Golden Arrow can transport its 250,000 passengers every day, employ some of them to launch these solar-powered buses and then continue to add more buses to its network. Thanks to Golden Arrow, Africa is better poised to fight harmful energy, add new jobs and fight poverty within the continent.

– Matt Orth
Photo: Unsplash