Kempower and E-GAP: Powering Rome’s local public transport bus fleet
Across Europe, the electrification of municipal bus fleets is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. In Italy alone, electric buses accounted for around 40% of all new city bus registrations in 2025, with major metropolitan areas such as Rome, Milan, Turin and Naples leading the transition.
This trend is consistent across Southern Europe, where public funding, EU decarbonization targets and falling total cost of ownership are driving large-scale investments in zero-emission public transportation infrastructure.
Since 2025, Kempower and E-GAP partnered to support the electrification of Rome’s public transport bus depots for the Rome East and Rome West transport lots, through a long-term, solid partnership built around innovation, scalability and operational efficiency.
The challenge: Powering Rome’s growing electric local public transport fleet
When E-GAP first approached Kempower, it was already a leading Italian operator specialising in Fleet-as-a-Service (FaaS) solutions for electric public transportation.
The collaboration between Kempower and E-GAP is focused on enabling cities to electrify their bus fleets efficiently to meet accelerating demand, all while minimizing complexity, risk and upfront investment.
As Kempower and E-GAP began planning the first depots as part of Rome project, they faced some challenges specific to municipal bus fleet electrification:
- Maintaining normal operation – timing is everything in bus transportation, meaning that depots’ charging set-ups needed to support usual seamless day-to-day operation of Rome’s buses.
- Reliability – charging infrastructure needed to be reliable all day and night to allow buses to remain charged and maintain daily schedules.
- Scalability – the city of Rome has plans to transition its bus fleet to electric over time, which means charging infrastructure will have to expand too. It is important that the initial installations are easy to scale with the transition.
The solution: Optimized charging for a bus fleet on the move
End-to-end involvement
Kempower’s local Italian team, which has a strong technical and operational background in complex e-bus projects, delivered a tailored approach.
Kempower provided upfront consultancy, including pre-deployment simulations based on real operational data supplied by E-GAP’s technical team. This phase was critical to identifying the optimal power configuration and future-proofing the site.
Kempower then worked in close coordination with its service partner, TSG, to ensure a seamless installation that complied with strict timelines.
A charging set-up that meets the bus fleet’s needs
The charging infrastructure is based on a dual-use, modular Kempower configuration, designed to maximize flexibility and future scalability.
Seven Kempower Power Units, totalling 4MW of power, are connected to 50 Kempower Satellite connectors, serving a fleet of around 150 e-buses since August 2025. The chosen configuration facilitates two different approaches to charging:
- Charging scenario one: Night-time depot charging. When the buses return to the depot each night, their charge is replenished overnight. This form of overnight charging is optimized for cost efficiency and load balancing.
- Charging scenario two: Daytime opportunity charging. The Kempower Satellites deliver up to 160 kW per connector for the buses (which are equipped with 800-volt battery systems) allowing them to deliver significant short bursts of power to the buses as they pass through during the day. This additional charging scenario increases operational flexibility and fleet availability.
Resilience and scalability through distributed charging
A key strength is the distributed charging architecture, which is particularly well suited to large municipal depots, where charging demand varies significantly throughout the day and night.
The Kempower Power Units act as the core power centre on-site. Rome plans to grow its electric fleet over time, meaning charging capacity will have to expand. E-GAP can simply increase the power delivered on-site by increasing the capacity in the remaining Kempower Power Unit and installing further Kempower Power Units, which can each power up to 12 Kempower Satellites.
The modular design means that, in the case of a fault, the system can continue to function normally at a slightly lower power capacity before returning to normal operation, keeping the charging infrastructure reliable.
Efficient site management
The depot is managed via ChargeEye, Kempower’s cloud-based charging management platform, enabling dynamic peak power balancing, and advanced optimization of energy costs. It also unlocks 24/7 remote monitoring, allowing quick responses in the event of an issue, helping maintain a high uptime.
Furthermore, each connector is equipped with a certified power meter, enabling precise measurement and certification of the energy delivered. The additional power meter unlocks valuable data for public transport operators that require transparent, auditable energy data for operational and regulatory purposes.
Efficiency is also boosted through the dynamic charging element, as allocating charging power based on need optimizes charging times and total cost of ownership over the system’s lifetime.
The result: Setting a new standard for urban e-bus depots
The Roma project’s depot demonstrates how a well-designed, scalable charging infrastructure, combined with a Fleet-as-a-Service model, can accelerate the electrification of public transport in large European cities. Results include:
- Reliable and seamless operation: Preventive and corrective maintenance continues through a dedicated service contract delivered via TSG and the Kempower charging system’s redundant architecture together ensure the charging system maintains a 99% system uptime and long-term system reliability.
- Energy and cost efficiency: Kempower’s charger design prioritizes efficiency, ChargEye’s integrated planning reduces energy costs by charging at optimal times, and E-GAP’s Fleet-as-a-Service model reduces operational risk.
- Sustainability: Together, E-GAP and Kempower are helping Rome move decisively towards zero-emission mobility, delivering a solution that is not only powerful, but also flexible, transparent and ready for the future. [more sustainability achievements]
- Scalability: A carefully planned site and use of a modular and dynamic charging set-up makes scalability in-built. Once phase two of the Rome’s project will be completed by the second half of 2026, there will be 120 Kempower Points of charges, with a total installed power exceeding 10 MW, positioning Rome among the most advanced cities in Italy for electric bus charging infrastructure.
Operational performance at scale
Since entering operation in August2025, the first phase depot has already enabled thousands of charging sessions, delivering several GWh of energy to Rome’s electric bus fleet. These results highlight the robustness of the charging infrastructure, in supporting high-utilization, mission‑critical public transportation operations at scale, while ensuring reliability, efficiency and long-term performance.
“We were able to meet the needs of the first bus depot, namely a reliable, scalable and efficient charging set-up that enables smooth day-to-day operations using Kempower’s charging infrastructure. The success of this first project will act as the blueprint as we expand the project to other depots in Rome.” said Marco Bettega, Kempower’s Country Manager Italy.
“This project is only the beginning for the electrification of public transportation in cities. We have proven that more sustainable public transport is not only possible, but also efficient and cost-effective, paving the way for a new standard for the cities of the future,” added Marco Cianfanelli, General Manager at E-GAP.
