The one thing the net zero transition requires? Innovation. Bus2Grid, a technology that decarbonises public transport by turning buses into virtual power plants, is a good example of that.
In common with electric cars, EV buses need to be fully charged from the grid before they can leave the depot to serve Londoners. Because of their bigger size EV buses will naturally be a bigger drain than cars on the grid capacity of the capital. With a city such as London operating some 9,000 buses, the drain on the grid created by electrifying a full fleet could be huge.
Unless, that is, the buses form part of an energy exchange. SSE Enterprise is currently trialling Bus2Grid at a London bus garage. The project uses the batteries of 28 state-of-the-art double decker buses to return unused energy to the grid. The buses are AC charged with two 40kW on-board chargers, which means each bus is a mobile discharge facility with the ability to feed power back into the grid at times when it’s most needed, softening the impact on the energy supply of the areas the buses serve.
This article was originally published in The Times.