Kempower and JET Charge Complete Electric Bus Depot Upgrade in Western Australia

The Western Australian government is in the process of fully electrifying the Transperth network of buses. The federal and state governments will jointly invest A$250 million to replace diesel buses with locally built electric buses while upgrading depots with the needed charging infrastructure. Some 173 electric buses have already been delivered, including Australia’s first locally manufactured electric articulated bus.

The latest step towards a zero-emission public transport network was the completion of a major charging infrastructure upgrade at the Karrinyup Bus Depot, the third bus depot in Perth to be electrified. JET Charge delivered the project for Programmed, the facility manager for the Transperth bus network, including electrical and civil design, construction and commissioning. Kempower supplied the charging hardware.

The Karrinyup site currently supports 71 electric buses, and capacity is to increase to 110 buses by the end of the year. The depot has been equipped with 56 Kempower Satellites, providing a total of 112 CCS2 charging plugs, each capable of delivering up to 150 kW of power.

Further depot upgrades are currently underway at Bayswater and Jandakot North, also using Kempower equipment.

“Bus operators are not buying chargers. They are buying the certainty that buses leave the depot on time, every day,” said Tim Washington, CEO of JET Charge. “That certainty comes from one party being accountable for the whole system: the design, the high-voltage works, the safety systems, the software integration and the commissioning. At Karrinyup we carried that end to end, so Programmed and the PTA have one number to call rather than a queue of contractors. Kempower gave us hardware we could stand behind, and we built the rest of the system around it.”

Source: Kempower