Reliable charging of e-buses for ACTV in Venice

As part of the electrification of its bus fleet, ACTV – the operator of public transport in Venice – was looking for a future-proof charging solution for the bus depot near the lagoon city.   

As part of its roadmap for low-emission passenger transport, the city of Venice has now introduced a new charging infrastructure to support the operation of its battery-electric bus fleet – in partnership with ABB E-mobility, MAN Truck & Bus Italy, Telebit, and The Mobility House Solutions.  

The project is part of Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), which provides funding for sustainable mobility projects in large urban areas. The introduction of electric buses in Venice is supported by local funding and technical partnerships and is in line with the overarching European goals and targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air quality in cities.  

Although Venice presents unique geographical challenges, the project demonstrates that coordinated planning and integrated technology can enable viable zero-emission solutions even in historically constrained cities. 

In collaboration with ABB E-mobility and system integrator Telebit, 44 ABB Terra DC charging stations, each with a capacity of 184 kW, were installed at the ACTV bus depot, supported by a total grid capacity of 5 MVA. Each charging station has remote management functions that enable real-time diagnostics, maintenance planning, and charging optimization based on the load profile of the depot.   

The charging system is designed to ensure complete interoperability between the infrastructure, vehicle systems, and energy management platforms.   

ChargePilot takes over complete control of static load management. A special feature was the integration of a multi-fuse setup with three sub-distributions, fed by three transformers connected in parallel. The maximum energy consumption is determined by the capacity of the medium-voltage connection, so ChargePilot intelligently controls the energy flows within these limits. 

The infrastructure has also been designed to be scalable, so that future expansion is possible without any problems, should additional electric vehicles be introduced into the fleet. 

The buses, which each cover a daily distance of approximately 200 km, are charged overnight using 150 kW DC fast chargers. This configuration ensures that the vehicles are ready for use every morning without any disruption to the timetable. 

Although technically possible via ChargePilot and extensively tested by us via the ChargePilot dashboard, ACTV has not yet requested schedule-based control. The customer wanted to define the target state of charge (SoC) directly in the bus backend and, due to sufficient connection power available on site, initially opted for static load management. 

Drivers are not assigned specific buses, but can choose from the available, fully charged buses before their shift. A traffic light system above the bus parking spaces shows whether a bus is currently charging or not: ChargePilot detects the status of the respective charging stations (available, charging, error), transmits this information via a TCP protocol to a local programmable logic controller from Siemens, where it is translated into the visual signals of the traffic lights.

The MAN buses, in turn, are automatically authorized for charging via their MAC address, which is stored in ChargePilot, and can thus be charged without any additional RFID cards. 

The technical rollout on site was handled by our partner Telebit, a solution provider with strong system integration expertise. At The Mobility House Solutions, we provided remote support with: 

• Creation of vehicle IDs  

• Integration and configuration of charging stations in the ChargePilot backend  

• Setup and mapping of the electrical structure in the system (parameterization)  

The project started on October 22, 2024, and after intensive preparation, the system went live in mid-March 2025. Good communication and easy collaboration with Telebit proved to be the cornerstone of the successful implementation.

From the outset, great attention was paid to comprehensively testing the entire system of e-buses, charging stations, and load management with various use cases to ensure smooth implementation. This enabled us to hand over a smoothly functioning system to ACTV.

Industry experts joined forces for the ACTV project at the bus depot in Venice: MAN Truck & Bus Italia supplied the electric vehicles, while ABB E-mobility was responsible for the delivery and commissioning of the hardware. The Mobility House Solutions supplied the ChargePilot hardware and software for intelligent load management, and system integrator Telebit was our expert partner and extended arm on site to set up the charging infrastructure. 

Thanks to the intelligent architecture and precise coordination of all parties involved, a solution was created at the bus depot in Venice that is both scalable and future-proof – marking another important step towards the electrification of European public transport.