Recently the potential for the electrification of urban bus fleets has attracted considerable policy, industrial and academic attention. Although there are significant potential benefits in terms of reduced local emissions and operating costs, electric bus operations raise a number of new challenges -- how electric bus fleets and electric network operators can optimally benefit from the synergetic interaction, both as consumers of electricity and providers of grid balancing services. Researches in the public transport field exhibit simplistic learning from isolated operations in the proof-of-concept projects without considering the dynamic in electricity supply, whilst the lack of understanding of the interdependence between electric mobilities and charging flexibility has limited power system researchers’ applicability of load management of electric bus fleets.

Against this backdrop, this thesis proposed, analysed and tested an analytic framework consist of two approaches that accommodates the interaction between the grid-integrated e-bus operation and demand side management in power system. At First, the classic frequency setting models are extended to incorporate the charging dimensions -- charging duration and residual energy requirement -– and embedded into a Stackelberg game model where the lower-level problem corresponds to the electricity pool market which generates distribution level location-specific prices. Secondly, in order to couple more complicated bus service patterns including short-turning and interlining options, a novel adaptive service scheduling approach is developed to embrace higher level of flexibility responding to the variation of passengers demand and electricity tariff. Extensive case studies using real-world transit data and IEEE test system, with different scenarios of operating conditions, are used to validate the theoretical properties of the proposed mechanism. This framework provides tools enabling the electric bus fleets operator to achieve cost-effectiveness by understanding the implication of dynamics in electricity supply and electric network operators to deliver efficient load management by utilising the flexibility of electric buses loads.