Happy Thanksgiving, whatever form it may take for you this year! I’m sending empathy for COVID confinement, and for the harsh losses of all kinds that people have suffered this year. I do see electrification of bus fleets as one of the most transformative things we can devote ourselves to. It can address inequity, improve public health and battle climate change. We’re building a clean energy economy together, and our new federal administration intends to help. This month’s issue addresses frequently asked questions on the challenging work of electrification.
1.) Where can I find funding for electric school buses (ESB’s)? Most ESB funding comes from Volkswagen settlement sources (Colorado has become very active here recently, on the heels of many other states) or from utilities. The latter helps explain why I write a lot about utilities. If you’re in California, Air Quality Service Districts are also a prime source of ESB funding. A bus yard needs to be in a utility’s service territory to be eligible for its funding programs (see 3. below).
2.) How can we serve equity and racial justice in our electric bus project? Crucial question. I’ve much yet to learn, but this I know: engage the right people, listen, and incorporate what you learn into your work. It’s easy for white people, including myself in the past, to think, “I’m not racist, neither is my organization, plus our bus-lines serve mostly low-income people already, so we’re good to go here, thanks!” This thinking denies deep-seated inequity and doesn’t move fairness forward.
I just worked on a proposal involving ESB’s and vehicle to grid (V2G), and learned in discussion with a Latinx-focused nonprofit that the children of its community live within half a mile of their school. This means they don’t get to ride a school bus of any type, and parents are distressed about their kids walking to school on unsafe, sidewalk-less, heavily trafficked streets. I need to not be an ESB fanatic here, not be a hammer insisting that things be nails. I need to support this community’s agenda, rather than insist on my own, and also learn where ESB’s may be more relevant.
3.) What are the different kinds of electric utilities? I’m so glad you asked! While all three types have funded e-buses and partnered with fleets on pilot projects, they have key differences. From small to large:
- Co-ops, member-owned, generally rural, not for profit. Local decision-making.
- Public utilities, city or regionally owned, not for profit.
- Investor owned utilities (IOU’s), for profit. Regulated by states’ utility commissions.
4.) What will be the hardest part of my e-bus project? Besides truly baking equity into your project, charging infrastructure is the hardest part. Start on it early. It’s often termed EVSE for Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. Many original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s) and vendors produce charging infrastructure. See jargony utility terms in 7.) below.
5.) Which OEM has the most electric school buses on the road? The buses – the fun part! Lion Electric manufactured about 4/5 of the 500 plus ESB’s on the road in North America, and is the only school bus OEM focused on electrified transportation. Blue Bird, a traditional, incumbent OEM, celebrated its 100th ESB delivered some months ago. Thomas Built, the incumbent peer of Blue Bird, recently started delivering its first ESB’s to various school districts in Virginia, through Dominion Energy’s large funding venture.
6.) Will my utility be responsible for my charging equipment? Counterintuitively, no. One utility ESB expert says, “Think of your chargers as appliances”. He means that utilities see chargers the way they see refrigerators, i.e., their job is to supply the electricity, not ensure the appliance will perform well. Look to your EVSE manufacturer (or installer, they’ll often be different vendors) to address performance issues.
7). What do these jargony utility terms mean?
- Behind the meter: the parts of the charging infrastructure that are the bus fleet’s responsibility. Utilities sees their conduits, work, etc as being on their side of the meter, or in front of it.
- “Make ready” – ready for what? Ready for a fleet to install one or more electric chargers. When the utility has installed conduit, wire and concrete pad so that the site is ready for vehicle chargers, it’s done a make ready.
- Bidirectional (two-way) charging: Most ESB’s are equipped to feed energy back into the electric grid as well as receive energy from the grid. (More theoretical than practical yet; see V2G below). A bus can do only one of these at a time; it must be out of service, parked and plugged into its charging infrastructure to either receive or send energy.
- AC/DC: Kick-ass rock band of the olden days, best song being “You Shook Me All Night Long”, to which I choreographed a modern dance number in November of 1980 at Wake Forest University. I digress. My COVID stir-craziness sends me down memory lane.
- AC: alternating current, the form of electricity we all use, e-buses included. Electricity starts as direct current (DC) and can get converted to usable AC either on the bus, with Level 2 charging, or off the bus with Level 3, also known as fast, direct or DC charging. DC/fast chargers are 7-10x more expensive than Level 2 chargers. Vehicle to grid (V2G) services typically use DC/fast charging (see 10. below).
- Demand charges: Utility fees applied to the highest amount of power used in a billing period. Comparable to a speeding ticket, demand charges can erase the intended fuel savings of electric buses. Which leads us to . . .
- Managed charging: key to achieving fuel savings with electric buses. Energy is generally cheaper during low-use times, such as late night/early morning, and more expensive during peak use, such as late afternoon/early evening. A confusing (to me, at least) array of vendors offer various technologies that coordinate e-bus charging with utility rates and tariffs to maximize a fleet’s fuel savings.
8.) What is V2G? It’s vehicle to grid services, where electrified vehicles of any type would feed energy back into the grid when the utility’s service territory is low on energy. Coal is being phased out as an energy source, and solar power, the fastest-growing source of energy, pairs very well with V2G, which pairs well with ESB’s. Fleets of ESB’s supplying V2G could avert the building of costly new energy plants. V2G is being piloted in many places with ESB’s, but I’m told real viability is still five years out.
9.) Why are utilities willing to fund ESB’s but not electric public transit buses? School bus battery-banks are available for V2G services a much higher percentage of the time. Crucially, school buses are parked most of the summer, which is when many utilities have peak demand on their electricity, and when risk of wildfire makes them most likely to shut power off altogether. (Note that these Public System Power Shutoffs have the harshest impact on low income people.)
10.) Is it worth it to pay 7-9x more for fast charging? It depends. The average school bus that operates just 5.5 hours/day, 180 days/year would have ample time to charge at Level 2, which is cheap and takes about eight hours. But V2G needs much faster transfer of energy in each direction, making costly DC charging a necessity if you’ll be doing V2G. So, the answer to this question depends on who’s paying, and particularly on what your goals and vision are for your fleet. And it’s good to get clear on those early on, in any event.
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.
Whose land are you on?