ChargePoint and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which oversees all ground transportation in the city, announced an agreement that paves the way toward deployment of high-powered charging infrastructure to support the agency’s transition to battery-electric buses.

ChargePoint’s Express Plus charging architecture will be installed as part of the revitalization of the Woods Bus Yard and will fuel the first full battery-electric buses to hit the streets of San Francisco beginning in 2020.

SFMTA plans to electrify the entire fleet by 2035. Electrification of buses is forecast to be one of the most aggressive sectors of the market in the coming years, with experts anticipating that electric buses will make up about half of all those in service in the United States by 2029 and nearly 70% of all buses in operation by 2040, well ahead of growth rates of passenger vehicles.

Electrification of the Woods Bus Yard is expected to reach completion next fall and will support nine battery-electric buses that are expected to enter service during the same timeframe. The deployment of charging infrastructure is part of a broader upgrade to the SFMTA Woods Bus Yard which also includes other facility enhancements and training.

ChargePoint will work closely with SFMTA to build out electric bus infrastructure for the Woods Bus Yard beginning later this year. Leveraging ChargePoint’s advanced high-powered charging architecture, the project will include nine ChargePoint Express Plus DC charging solutions with power provided by nine ChargePoint Power Blocks, enabling charging output of more than 150 kW per bus.

In addition to hardware, ChargePoint will empower SFMTA teams with a suite of software solutions to help improve efficiency and lower ongoing electricity costs. They include power and energy management tools, and a comprehensive dashboard that provides real-time status and other vital information, to ensure maximum uptime. ChargePoint will also act as the project management team overseeing the installation and commissioning of the site, assisting with training of SFMTA employees, and providing ongoing service and maintenance support.

ChargePoint’s Express Plus ultra-fast, high-powered DC charging architecture will underpin the bus yard’s charging infrastructure. The platform includes modular building blocks that can be configured to meet the requirements of any site and grow incrementally as charging demands increase.

The flexibility of the architecture enables the technology to be used in a wide range of applications, from corridor and metropolitan applications that support the ultra-fast charging of light duty vehicles to applications that support high-powered charging for truck and bus fleets.