Fleet Electrification Project:
Chapel Hill Transit
Detailed planning for zero-emission bus fleet transition
Client: Chapel Hill Transit
Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill Transit is the public transit service in the City of Chapel Hill, NC that serves routes in the City and also through the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus. Chapel Hill Transit is electrifying a portion of their bus fleet in order to reduce emissions and test the viability of an entire electric fleet.
Microgrid Labs (MGL) supported this effort by conducting route energy analyses to identify the routes that can be electrified. Once the routes were identified, MGL did physics-based modeling to identify the bus battery size required in order to reliably operate the electric buses on each specific route taking into consideration battery lifetime and degradation.
Further, MGL did mathematical modeling to recommend the electric vehicle charging infrastructure required to support the charging requirements of the electric fleet. This includes identifying the type of chargers, number of chargers, capabilities of the chargers, location of chargers, charging schedule, etc.