Electric bus scheduling with the self-adaptive charging strategy based on a course selection idea

Abstract

This paper investigates the electric bus scheduling problem, aiming to design collaborative service and charging schedules. A self-adaptive charging strategy is introduced, allowing electric buses to be recharged partially and flexibly. Then, a mixed-integer programme model is built for the problem, based on a course selection idea that considers continuous time. Two models for scenarios considering prior greedy and full charging strategies are also established for comparison. Next, a greed-based branch-and-price algorithm is developed for model solving, which incorporates a greedy attachment heuristic for the initialisation and a customised branching scheme based on the course flow. The results of a case study in Beijing show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and the superiority of the self-adaptive charging strategy. Compared with the two prior charging strategies, the average energy replenishment of electric buses is reduced by 22.47% and 35.99%, and the system cost is reduced by 5.47% and 5.60%.

KEYWORDS:

• Electric bus scheduling
• self-adaptive charging strategy
• charging schedule
• course selection
• branch-and-price

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 72171020, 71890972/71890970, 72288101) and the 111 Project (No. B20071). Besides, the author thanks Jianhua Chen of Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen, China, for his help in writing-review and editing.