Smart charging of an electric bus fleet

Sammanfattning: Controlling the balance of production and consumption of electricity will become increasingly challenging as the transport sector gradually converts to electric vehicles along with a growing share of wind power in the Swedish electric power system. This puts greater demand on resources that maintain the balance to ensure stable grid operation. The balancing act is called frequency regulation which historically has been performed almost entirely by hydropower. As the power production becomes more intermittent with renewable energy sources, frequency regulation will need to be performed in higher volumes on the demand side by having a more flexible consumption. In this report, the electrification of 17 buses Svealandstrafiken bus depot in Västerås has been studied. The aim has been to assess different charging strategies to efficiently utilize the available time and power but also to investigate if Svealandstrafiken can participate in frequency regulation. A smart charging model was created that demonstrated how smart charging can be implemented to optimize the charging in four different cases. The simulated cases were: charging with load balancing, reduced charging power, frequency regulation, and electrifying more buses. The results show that the power capacity limit will be exceeded if the buses are being charged directly as they arrive at the depot and without scheduling the charging session. By implementing smart charging, Svealandstrafiken can fully charge the 17 buses within the power capacity limit of the depot with 82 minutes to spare. By utilizing this 82-minute margin in the four different charging strategies, it was found that Svealandstrafiken can save 88 200SEK per year by load balancing, save 30 000 SEK per year by reducing the charging power by 10 %, earn 111 900 SEK per year by frequency regulation or electrify five more buses. Reducing the charging power may also increase the lifetime of the batteries but quantifying this needs further studies. Conclusively, there is economic potential for Svealandstrafiken for implementing smart charging.