In mid-September, all mySMARTLife partners gathered in Hamburg, one of the projects Lighthouse Cities beside Helsinki and Nantes, for the projects first review meeting and a study tour to the demonstration site Bergedorf.
The district of Bergedorf is diverse, with a historic centre including numerous heritage-listed houses as well as residential buildings. All are subject of an integrated strategy targeting the quality of life, citizen involvement, technical and social infrastructures, public buildings and spaces.
The study lunch tour of the mySMARTLife consortium led the team to the depot of the Authority of Management of Public Space, where cars are used for the regular control of streets, watercourses and forestry. Since the start of mySMARTLife, ten combustion cars have been replaced by e-cars and ten charging stations have been installed. Currently, it is being examined to what extent and how many e-bikes can become part of the public fleet. Simultaneously, Stromnetz Hamburg GmbH has implemented and tested a new generation of load management functionality as part of the e-mobility backend systems.
However, e-mobility is not limited to the public fleet in the smart city Hamburg. The mySMARTLife team in Hamburg is also working on the electrification of the local bus depot and the deployment of charging infrastructure.
Visting the depot of the bus operator “Verkehrsbetriebe Hamburg-Hostein GmbH” (VHH), a public transport operator in Hamburg and the surrounding districts, the mySMARTLife consortium learnt that the City of Hamburg has a policy to procure exclusively emission free buses from 2020 onwards.
“It is impressive how Hamburg is approaching the subject of e-mobility with successfully having tendered ten e-buses for the delivery in 2018/19. But also training and engaging staff such as bus drivers, dispatchers and technicians as well as rescue works on high voltage technology”, stated Rubén García Pajares, project coordinator of mySMARTLife.
