Assessing the Charging Load of Battery Electric Bus Fleet for Different Types of Charging Infrastructure

The deployment of battery electric bus (BEB) fleets is subject to many challenges related to the readiness of the electric utility grid to host the additional power demand due to the fleet charging. Without deploying an adequate charging infrastructure, BEB market penetration at a massive scale is not achievable soon. This paper proposes a BEB fleet energy model in an accelerated offline simulation environment to evaluate the fleet energy behavior and charging load using different charging scenarios, infrastructure types, and battery sizes. The model includes components such as the BEB, bus stops, terminal, depot stations, and chargers. The obtained results show the impact of the different stationary charging infrastructures on the electric utility grid. A BEB fleet of 20 buses could result in a 2.4 MW power demand at night for an overnight charging method whereas opportunity charging scenarios result in a maximum power demand between 0.5-1 MW- encountered mainly during the day- depending on the number of daily charging events.