Smart charging is becoming the operational backbone of electric bus fleets. Forbes highlighted this in a piece on why smart charging is key to successful electric bus operations, emphasizing that the real challenge is often in the backend coordination (tariffs, charging timing, fleet constraints, etc.).
A great example is the Applied Energy paper by INESC Coimbra researchers Jônatas Manzolli, João Pedro Trovão, and Carlos Henggeler Antunes (Applied Energy, vol. 381, 2025). The study uses a robust optimization framework that explicitly considers battery ageing, time-of-use tariffs, V2G, operational constraints, and uncertainty in energy consumption.
What stands out: in a real-world mid-sized Portuguese city case, coordinated charging delivered meaningful cost reductions versus business-as-usual (including a robust solution under uncertainty), while also showing that V2G revenues need to be weighed against battery degradation costs.
