The encyclopedia · Software & IT · Technical decision · 2016–2021
Rotterdam electrified seven bus lines by re-optimizing charging live, not off-line
RET's electric buses re-optimized charging live against traffic and renewables — what static planning couldn't do.
Rotterdamse Elektrische Tram (RET)
The solution
In 2016 the Dutch government committed to full electrification of diesel transit bus networks between 2025 and 2030. The city's operator, RET, faced a transition no static plan could handle: bus networks are live systems where traffic delays and energy use shift constantly.
Rotterdam School of Management researchers worked with RET to build a discrete-event simulation of the network, a mixed-integer linear program optimizing the charging schedule, and — the key move — a real-time decision support system that re-optimizes charging through the day as delay and energy realizations arrive. The system also coordinates charging with the output profile of renewable generators.
The comparison showed real-time re-optimization beats off-line planning and greedy strategies, and that even highly conservative off-line plans fail under extreme uncertainty. The project contributed directly to electrifying seven essential bus lines in Rotterdam, and RET adopted a real-time monitoring system plus the charging-schedule optimizer.
Why it worked
- Real-time re-optimization regenerates the schedule with new information, so a delayed bus or a sunny interval changes the plan instead of breaking it.
- Coordinating charging with renewables turns the bus fleet into a flexible electricity consumer — a second revenue story on top of clean buses.
- The discrete-event simulation let the team prove reliability under extreme uncertainty before spending one euro on infrastructure.
What can be applied
When the environment keeps moving, the optimizer must run in the loop: a perfect plan computed once is worth less than a good plan recomputed every hour.
Aftermath
The work was a finalist for the 2020 Daniel H. Wagner Prize and published in the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics. RET's first phase electrified seven essential city bus lines; the operator has integrated the charging optimizer into its planning process and runs a real-time monitoring system.
Sources
- A Boost for Urban Sustainability: Optimizing Electric Transit Bus Networks in Rotterdam
- A Boost for Urban Sustainability: Optimizing Electric Transit Bus Networks in Rotterdam
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