Montgomery County, Maryland, which is home to the biggest fleet of electric school buses in the United States, just opened the largest transit bus charging station and microgrid in the nation. The Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot, a new charging station, and a microgrid will be especially helpful as the county gets ready to electrify every bus in its transportation system by 2026. The country’s objective to achieve net-zero emissions by 2035 includes the project.
The depot has 1.8 MW of on-site natural gas generating in addition to solar canopies, battery energy storage, electric bus chargers, and microgrid software and controls from AlphaStruxture.
The intention is to continue running the fleet of electric buses even in the event of utility outages. According to the Montgomery County Office of Legislative Oversight, the county has over 1.1 million residents, and on an average workday in 2018, 38,070 people took the buses.
A key component of Montgomery County’s ambitious climate action, according to Linda Toth, associate sustainability consultant at Arup, a project partner, is reducing transportation emissions.
The County with AlphaStruxure is beginning to make a meaningful effect while signaling the future potential for communities throughout the United States by opening its cutting-edge transportation center and microgrid.
The county is not required to pay for the installation of the charging stations and microgrids because AlphaStruxture is providing the Energy as a Service (EaaS) model for the Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot, which is free to the county.
According to AlphaStruxture, the depot will offer charging stations for up to 70 buses and prevent over 160,000 tonnes of carbon emissions throughout the course of the project. Arup further stated that the carbon emissions from buses that are charged by the microgrid will be reduced by 62%.
In Montgomery County, the transportation infrastructure of the future is already operational, according to Juan Macias, CEO of AlphaStruxure. We are thrilled to collaborate with Montgomery County on this all-encompassing solution that provides County constituents with better, cleaner services.
In order to effectively deploy the distributed energy resources and charging infrastructure that the energy transition requires, this benchmark project serves as a national model for municipalities and private fleet owners throughout the nation. This will hasten the electrification of medium and heavy-duty vehicle fleets.
