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Contactless charging shuttle bus at the Balingen Garden Show

Groundbreaking pilot project for electromobility in the German public transport system.

The shuttle bus operates in densely populated residential areas. (Photo: Elina)
The shuttle bus operates in densely populated residential areas. (Photo: Elina)
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von Claus Bünnagel

Since the opening of the Garden Show in Balingen (5.5. to 24.9.2023), visitors can enjoy not only fauna and flora but also a special driving experience. The fully electric shuttle bus charges its battery wirelessly while driving and waiting at stops. For the Garden Show, Balingen is the first city in Germany to test dynamic wireless charging technology for electric vehicles on public roads. The operational route of the Garden Show shuttle bus leads from the parking lot at the fairgrounds to the Stadthalle stop. The dynamic charging process takes place on a roughly 400-meter-long section on Wilhelmstraße.

Balingen is the first location in Germany to test the dynamic wireless charging technology DWPT in practice. This research project is an important step towards sustainable mobility and shows that the city supports the development of new technologies. The technology has the potential to play an important role in electromobility in the future. (Mayor Helmut Reitemann)

240 magnet coils in the ground

Preparations for the project have been underway since June 2022. To enable contactless charging, induction coils were embedded in about 400 meters of road and at two stops and connected to the power grid via underground cables. When the bus approaches the induction coils, high-frequency magnetic fields are generated there. These induce an electric current in receiver coils on the bus floor, which charges the battery. Most of the charging technology is invisible; only the control cabinets on the roadside and at the stops indicate the setup. In total, over 240 magnet coils were installed during the multi-week construction work.

Second induction route planned

In a further expansion phase, a second induction route with a total length of around 600 meters will be put into operation at the end of the Garden Show. The electric bus will then be used in regular public transportation operations on several Balingen bus lines and will charge on inductive charging routes totaling 1 kilometer in length while driving.

Project Partners

The project partners EnBW, Electreon Germany, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and the Research Center for Energy Economics Munich (FfE) aim to use and demonstrate the practicality of contactless charging technology under real conditions together with the municipal utilities of Balingen. The entire project is sponsored by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and is called Elina (Application of Dynamic Charging Infrastructure in Public Transport).

EnBW is responsible for project management as well as the setup and operation of the charging infrastructure. Alexander Pöllauer from the research and development division of EnBW manages the trial:

The operational start of the inductive charging technology at the Balingen Garden Show 2023 is an important milestone for us. The successful setup in the dense urban area brings the technology significantly closer to the goal of market readiness for use in public transport. We are now eager to see the experiences and data that we will gather from daily rigorous usage.

Electreon Germany retrofitted a Balingen public transport bus for the DWPT application and provided the charging infrastructure for the Elina project. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is developing a planning tool in the research project that is suitable for economically optimizing the planning of DWPT networks for public transport.

The planning tool combines traffic modeling, vehicle simulation, and modeling of the charging infrastructure. This allows the locations of the charging infrastructure to be optimally aligned with the route, taking various constraints into account. Data and insights from the real operation in Balingen enable the validation of the planning tool. (Patrick Ziesel from KIT)

The Research Center for Energy Economics Munich (FfE) examines the market potential and sustainability of the technology.

Translated automatically from German.
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