Bilbao will charge buses with excess power from local metro

Taking the step from electric charging to smart charging in the public transport network

The Bilbao City Council has affirmed its commitment to the electrification of the local public transport network with the announcement of a new initiative, which will see the application of smart charging to the city buses. This will be possible with the establishment of an infrastructure that will transfer unutilized electricity from the local metro network to the charging depot of the buses.

The project will be made possible through a large public-private partnership between the Bilbao City Council, Alsa (operator of the Bilbobus service) and the Medusa association composed of various energy providers.

Energy never gets lost, it just gets transferred

This scheme to optimize the use of the contracted power is applicable in railway networks, industrial complexes, large factories, port facilities, etc. It allows intelligent recharging from large consumers that require the contracting of high powers that they do not use continuously throughout the day.

Among the advantages of this approach, the use of existing electrical infrastructures without the need to request a new access and distribution point to the network, a competitive price, security of supply and the automation and intelligent operation of the charging process stand out.

The first project developed by Medusa offers the possibility of using the high-power infrastructure of Metro Bilbao to provide a complementary service to Bilbobus. This solution minimizes investments in new electrical connections and optimizes the use of contracted power.

It allows the bus fleet to be recharged without affecting the rail service, since the electrical supply to the trains will always take precedence over that of the buses if there is a metro service at that time, reducing the recharging of the buses when the trains pass. At night, when there is no metro service, bus recharging will be more intensive to optimize the system.

The Bilbao city council has announced that it is studying the possibility of extrapolating this technology to other cities.