The possibility of electrification in public transport bus services

Abstract

From Shenzhen to Philadelphia and Izmir to Delhi, public bus operators around the world are increasingly using electric buses. Their choice is not only justified by support for the green transition or the reduction of background traffic noise:  economic calculations regarding the entire life cycle cost also support the need for technological change. The article points out that the inclusion of electric vehicles in the service requires a complex approach and can bring a revolutionary change in our operation. The transport company can become a community service provider that occasionally provides balancing energy for energy supply systems (Vehicle-to-grid, i.e. V2G) or provides a virtual power plant service to the operators of photovoltaic power plants. The bus company can become a producer with independent network power generation capacity, which can sell the excess capacity it produces on the market to the owners of electric cars. The article presents the operating model that connects the transport, energy and battery industrial systems. Last but not least, batteries that have lost their capacity but are still usable can be resold for “storage” or other secondary purposes, even as uninterruptible power supplies. In order to implement the operation according to the model, Volánbusz Zrt. started building its data-driven ecosystem, which enables cost-optimized operation based on the data of an ever-growing electric bus fleet and the solutions of Industry 4.0 technology.