Public transit agency King County Metro has collaborated with EV charging firm The Mobility House to test the working and effectiveness of the latter’s energy and charge management solution ChargePilot.
The collaboration also will test ChargePilot’s compatibility with high-power plug-in and overhead chargers from ABB, Siemens and Heliox. The system is being tested to determine whether it can support its electrification plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2035.
“In collaboration with The Mobility House, we will be able to experiment with and learn from a variety of hardware solutions that we believe will help us achieve our long-term electrification goals,” said Kevin Kibet, the manager of the project for King County Metro.
King County Metro is the largest public transit agency in the Puget Sound region of northwest Washington state. Metro provides bus, paratransit, vanpool, and water taxi services, and operates Seattle Streetcar, Sound Transit Link light rail, and Sound Transit Express bus service.
ChargePilot optimizes fleet charging schedules to obtain the lowest electricity cost and ensure the availability of each electric bus. The system is expected to save the Metro a minimum of $9,457.20 per month in operating expenses on average.
The new chargers together have a nameplate capacity of 4.63 Megawatts. During testing, the firm will use 2.5 MW of transformer capacity. The cost to upgrade the transformer would have been $900,000 to $1 million. However, the ChargePilot’s local controller will manage load time, keep power usage less than the transformer’s limitation and save time and money.
