Exact approach to the electric bus fleet scheduling

In the recent years the research in the field of electromobility has been gaining a lot of interest. Research in the field of electromobility relates to various problems connected to the limited driving range of vehicles, locating of charging infrastructure and capacity of the electric network. These limitations should also be considered when solving the problem of transforming the public transport fleet of diesel engine busses into the fleet of electric vehicles. One of the tasks that should be solved is the problem of scheduling. This paper deals with the problem of assigning available electric buses to the set of service trips, in other words scheduling of electric buses. Electric buses have limited operation range and must be charged during the operation. Charging process needs more time than refueling of diesel busses and the number of charging points at charging station should be considered. In our case it is assumed that the charging is possible at the depot and at chosen locations. In the paper we propose a linear mathematical model that respects all necessary limitations. The performance of the model will be tested on the data set from the public transport system in the city of Žilina using a standard IP solver to evaluate the quality of the solution and computational time.