Passenger Weight Detection by Air Suspension Pressure Monitoring for Smart Grid Integration of Electric Buses

The German town of Solingen operates a large overhead grid for trolleybuses but still many lines have to be driven by diesel units. The lack of overhead wires on routes lies in e.g. monument protection or economic reasons. The so-called project BOB Solingen aims to fully electrify the bus fleet by integrating battery overhead buses (BOB) into Solingen’s Smart City concept. This shall be realized by e.g. enabling the buses to act as mobile energy storages and support the overhead grid when needed without risking their actual purpose – getting people from A to B. For this, a precise range calculation is required to decide how much energy can be used. As will be shown, vehicle mass is a crucial influence factor on consumption respectively range and therefore needs to be determined. Consequently, a promising approach for passenger weight detection using air suspension pressure sensors will be presented in this paper.