They won the award for their pioneering electric school bus infrastructure project at Zerega Avenue Depot in the Bronx. Representatives from The Mobility House and NYCSBUS accepted the award at the 2024 Con Edison E-Mobility Awards at the utility provider’s headquarters in New York.
The project team will deploy 25 EPA-funded zero-emission electric school buses equipped with advanced smart charging technology across New York City, with 14 located at NYCSBUS’ Zerega Avenue Depot. The project will provide educational benefits for school bus operators and districts throughout the region, and the project team includes World Resources Institute, Calstart, Bronx Community College, New York League of Conservation Voters, and South Bronx Unite.
The Mobility House, acting as the technical lead, worked with NYCSBUS and Con Edison to identify the available power capacity at the Zerega Avenue depot. Using their proprietary charging simulation tool, The Mobility House determined that NYCSBUS could use automated load management (ALM) to safely install 14 electric bus chargers, totaling 268 kW of nameplate capacity, on a site that is constrained to a maximum EV charging load limit of 80 kW. This marks the first implementation of an oversubscribed site using ALM within Con Edison's service territory.
Without the use of ALM, the Zerega depot would have been limited to charging only four buses on its 80 kW connection. The use of the ALM function of The Mobility House’s charge management system, ChargePilot, allowed NYCSBUS to maximise their existing utility infrastructure, avoid the cost of a utility upgrade, and accelerate the installation of their electric bus charging equipment.
Alison Kling, department manager of E-Mobility Infrastructure Programs at Con Edison, emphasised the significance of the collaboration, saying, "The success of this project demonstrates the power of technology to push the boundaries of what's possible in electric mobility. By working together to safely optimize EV chargers on a power-constrained site, we have developed a model that can be replicated across our service territory and beyond, paving the way for a cleaner, more sustainable future."
