A bus garage is being upgraded to become the world’s largest vehicle-to-grid trial site, running as a virtual power station when they are not in use.

The idea is to feed electricity from electric buses into the power network when demand is high, then charge the buses when there is low demand, helping balance the power network through peaks and troughs and make it more efficient.

Northumberland Park bus station will be used in the trial, as part of the Bus2Grid project being led by SSE Enterprise.

The power company says that if the entire London bus fleet of around 9,000 vehicles were to be converted with the technology being used in the Bus2Grid project, it could theoretically provide enough energy to supply more than 150,000 homes.

Niall Riddell, Smart Systems Innovation Sector Director explained, “Central to the challenge of decarbonising our transport and achieving climate change targets is how we can optimise the existing flexibility within the energy system. Developing a charging infrastructure that operates in two directions so that batteries can give back as well as take from the grid is an important part of this.”

The Bus2Grid project will be led by SSE Enterprise with partners including Go-Ahead London, BYD, Leeds University and UK Power Networks. The initial trial will use the batteries of 28 state-of-the-art double decker buses, capable of returning over 1MW energy to the grid.