PSI Transcom selected by BVG to provide depot and charging management system

PSI Transcom has been commissioned by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) with the delivery of the PSIebus depot and charging management system. In the future, the system will dispatch, monitor and control the vehicles, the company highlights.

BVG is continuing to push ahead with the electrification of its bus fleet. By the end of the year, 137 e-buses and by 2022 around 230 e-vehicles are to be in passenger service. A tender is now underway for 90 vehicles. The group targets a zero emission bus fleet in 2030.

By the way, BVG has also signed a telematics monitoring contract concerning the electric bus fleet with Dutch company ViriCiti. As of beginning October 2020, 59 of the 137 e-buses were already integrated. The rest will be added in the coming months to ViriCiti’s cloud-based platform. Thanks to ViriCiti’s software, BVG can see see real-time parameters such as the location of the buses, SoC, incidents.

PSI Transcom system to manage BVG e-bus fleet

The PSIebus depot and charging management system will initially coordinate and schedule the vehicles at the Indira Gandhi Street depot and ensure that all buses are reliably prepared for operation at the start of their route. All depot processes from vehicle location, parking, supply and workshop, driver registration and vehicle allocation will be mapped in a digital system, PSI Transcom points out.

And explains: «The disposition of the vehicles takes place within a few seconds and is based on PSI’s optimization software Qualicision, which determines the best possible solution in real time based on the operational conditions. For an optimal result, not only the vehicle and route characteristics are taken into account but also time-relevant variables such as weather data for that day. The system also includes factors such as the remaining range, the charging status and the required time in the charge planning».

PSI Transcom to control BVG energy demand

The integrated PSI charging management controls the entire energy demand of the depot and monitors and controls the individual charging devices. Expensive peak loads are avoided and the specifications of the network operator are taken into account.

Torsten Vogel, Managing Director of PSI Transcom comments «We are proud that we can now also make a significant contribution to climate-neutral public transport in our home city of Berlin. We have already successfully demonstrated our role as a pioneer in the field of e-mobility at the Hamburger Hochbahn AG. There the system is in use at Germany’s largest depot for e-buses. It is currently being rolled out at other companies, including Keolis in France». Keolis, in fact, has contracted PSI Transcom to deliver the depot and charging management system PSIebus for the approximately fifty electric buses at the Vélizy depot near Paris, the company explains.