What the heck does “vehicle to grid” (V2G) mean, if you operate school buses? In the utility world, V2G is all the rage, at least in concept, especially related to electric school buses (ESB’s). As an ESB advocate, I try to help school districts and utilities speak a common language, because moving to electric fuel hinges on their successful partnership
But before I launch into V2G, let me note a few things since I last wrote in September:
- I’m now doing some work for Center For Transportation and the Environment (CTE), a mission-driven nonprofit that has helped deploy more than 265 electric buses
- But this newsletter is still my own volunteer effort
- The Oregon Department of Education indicates it may start the process of allowing ESB’s into statute next month (an exemption process is also available, they remind us)
- Portland General Electric has finally posted its Electric School Bus program and is accepting applications from SD’s in its territory to be part of it
In the school bus context, vehicle to grid means that if you had electric school buses, your utility would at times feed their batteries’ energy back into the grid. Your batteries would have been charged up earlier, typically overnight, when energy demand is lowest (and students don’t need to go anywhere). Or, the utility might slow the rate of your ESB’s charging, to help balance its load.
Either way, your electric buses would have to be out of service and parked to supply V2G services, presumably at their charging depot in your bus yard. It would be a committed use that you’d negotiate ahead of time with your utility. It would change your current operations model, as would ESB’s in general.
Why? V2G is designed to help utilities meet their peak loads, especially during very hot and very cold weather, when their customers need the most electricity. Energy-in and energy-out is a constant juggling act for them. The quirky, counter-intuitive thing is that utilities can’t store energy, until very recently. In general, they use it or lose it.
That storage problem is a key reason our electric grids, both in the U.S. and worldwide, depend so heavily on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are dense, storing massive amounts of energy that are actually the compressed dead plants — ancient sunlight — of eons past. In contrast, renewables, like wind and sun, are being made in real time. They’re much less dense, and they are intermittent, since the wind only blows about one-third of the time, and the sun shines less than half the time. Happily, these elegantly clean renewables have become cheap to produce, and they’re dirt-cheap to maintain.
Back to the main story: V2G using ESB batteries could help utilities solve their storage and peak-load problems, spreading energy around more effectively. V2G is part of what utilities call demand-response (DR) services, and of the swiftly changing utility world in general.
When would my buses be used for V2G services? It depends, because utilities vary in when they struggle to meet peak load. The most-discussed scenario is hot summer afternoons and evenings, when people get home from work and blast their air conditioners on. Sharp, sudden temperature changes can shock human bodies and electric grids alike. Brownouts, blackouts, and outages are a risk. Utilities fear and avoid those the way school districts fear and avoid bus crashes in which students get hurt. Every industry has its nightmare scenarios — and its dream scenarios.
On the dreamy side, summer is when most school buses sit parked, snoozing. Maybe snoring. If they have electric batteries, they could be feeding energy into a hungry grid, possibly the cleanest, most useful and industrious parked buses in human history. Also, ESB battery-packs can offer resiliency in community emergencies. I’m told Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls is looking at this.
Would V2G ever be to the detriment of school buses’ core mission of getting students to school? Who gets the final say on whether an ESB is transporting students or parked, transporting energy, on a given day, or in a given hour? What if utilities’ peak loads peak load coincides with school districts’ bell times? Which leads to the next question.
Do electric school buses have to do V2G? Not necessarily. School districts should analyze it carefully as an option. Many of the ESB’s currently in operation aren’t in V2G projects. ESBs’ zero tailpilpe emissions are often considered enough of a benefit, along with fuel and maintenance savings.
Some ESB pilots run by large investor-owned utilities (IOU’s) are experimenting with V2G, such as Florida Power and Light and San Diego Gas and Electric. I think everyone wants to see how these pilots go, and benefit from the lessons learned.
Is there any money in V2G for school districts? My take is that the money for school districts is in utilities (like PGE) covering the up-front, incremental costs of the ESB’s and charging infrastructure. (Incremental means the cost difference between a diesel school bus and an ESB). Which is a lot. If there are any utilities talking about an ongoing revenue stream to school districts for V2G, I’d like to hear about that.
I’m off now to the annual dinner of Climate Solutions, a nonprofit I respect a lot, that I got to work with last year in persuading TriMet to commit to electrifying its diesel fleet. Next week I’m doing a lunch-and-learn event on electric buses for Forth Mobility, another great nonprofit. Lots of challenging, satisfying work ahead. Good to be doing it with so many committed people.
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.Whose land are you on?