As I’ve noted before, putting our heads together is super valuable as we transition to ESBs. Charging software made little sense to me until a reader from The Mobility House hit the reply button after he received my last newsletter, and offered to help me write about it. I took him up on that offer (find the results below). Note: I’m not smart enough about technology to analyze different companies’ offerings, or endorse one over another. And I don’t receive financial support from any companies. I do recommend World Resources Institute’s impartial Charge Management Software Catalog, which lays out six companies’ offerings, and is open to adding more as the ESB space keeps expanding. For general background on charging, consider glancing through my recent primer on it.
This issue includes:
- Little-known facts on charging and charging software
- Links to ESB webinars and progress on repowers
- Upcoming WASBE Forum November 14th (Women Accelerating School Bus Electrification)
- Invitation to run-through of my TEDx talk on ESBs taking place November 15th (I would value your feedback)
To frame it up, charging in general needs to be our first thought with ESBs, not the afterthought. It’s less intuitive than the bus. Charging is time-consuming to plan and install. Even though chargers are, at their core, just electric appliances, they involve conversations and relationship-building with the utility that supplies electricity to your bus yard. Utilities, bless their hearts, tend to use jargon like “behind the meter” (the bus fleet’s responsibility) and “in front of the meter” (their responsibility). Good idea to learn their terms, and also teach them your own.
Think of electricity as fuel (because it is fuel). Electricity is different in key ways, though, from diesel, gas and propane. Differences:
- Cost of electric fuel can vary by time of day and by season, but is much less volatile than the price of diesel
- You generally need to fuel/charge every day the bus goes out, unlike diesel
- Charging takes hours instead of minutes (overnight for Level 2)
- BUT – you don’t have to physically be there while it’s charging
Charging software is different, as an investment, from the ESBs and chargers that we can see and touch. Software can improve over time, i.e. with product updates and upgrades, while vehicles and chargers depreciate over time. But any software is invisible to us except through what it helps us do, or the information it yields. It offers a wide range of layers of functionality, i.e. for energy management, solar system integration, data retrieval, error management and more.
How to know if you need charging software? In general, if you have more than a handful of buses at a charging site, you will likely start having energy challenges that could benefit from a charge management system.
How much does charging software cost? Who sells it? Charging software is subscription-based, like wifi or cable TV. Subscriptions are per ESB charger. Software lives in the cloud and also gets installed in the on-site hardware of the subscriber. Subscription prices vary, one example being $180-$360 per charging port per year for Level 2 AC chargers to roughly twice that for DCFC (much faster) chargers. Again, I recommend browsing WRI’s 2023 Charge Management Software Catalog.
Charging software manages both timing and power level of your charging. The software works with the chargers and reads the State of Charge on DC Chargers and can show you charging sessions for all chargers. You can access the software platform on whatever computer or tablet your fleet uses.
Let’s use my dishwasher as an analogy. Timing-wise, I set it on a six hour delay, so it doesn’t compete with my hot bedtime bath (heaven forbid). Power-wise, I set it to a one-hour wash if my load is just glasses and sandwich plates, but to the long, heavy duty cycle if greasy pots are involved. In these simple ways, I’m managing my dishwasher’s energy use. In a more elaborate way, charging software manages your ESBs’ energy use. It helps a fleet achieve all cost savings possible from its electric fueling.
Charging software navigates complex utility rates so that a school bus fleet doesn’t have to. When charging ESBs, especially multiple ones at once, it’s easy to incur costly demand charges. Demand charges are like speeding tickets, but for charging too much, too fast, only you don’t have a speedometer you can watch in real time. Utility rates are called tariffs, and they, and utility bills, can be complicated.
Charging software may lead to you not needing as many chargers as you think you do – or your utility believed you needed. Read on for a true story that illustrates that.
A school bus operator serving the NYC school system, recently landed funding for 30 ESBs (yay!). But (big but) ConEd, the utility providing electricity to their site, identified just 80 kilowatts (kWs) of capacity available, which meant juice for only four 19.2kW chargers (oh no!).
We can call this a power-limited site, a common problem when adding lots of chargers, less common when doing a small ESB pilot project needing just one to three chargers. A costly electric upgrade is typically seen as the solution here, which can take one to two years. But in this case, The Mobility House (TMH) did software modeling that analyzed balance and distribution of available electricity. They clarified that 14 chargers using 19kW each could be installed without needing an upgrade, instead of the four initially thought. At this writing, those 14 chargers are being installed. To its credit, ConEd engaged in the dialogue that TMH initiated, and approved its recommendation.
I’m a big fan of saving money by stretching the resources we’ve got (my passion for repowers is an example). In this instance, charging software saved a lot of money, and stretched resources.
Charging software increases charging reliability. Everyone hates when you thought the bus was charging and it turns out it wasn’t, but it didn’t tell you that, and you don’t find out until the morning, when it’s got to go out on a route and only has 30% charge. (You then proceed to pull your hair out.) To prevent this, software can provide 24/7 monitoring, error management and remote reset capabilities.
Let’s say you get software, but your internet goes down. Ethernet, connecting your chargers to a local controller, mitigates against this. Think of the controller as similar to the backup engine of an airplane. It lets your charging continue even if your internet connectivity lapses, thus avoiding the hair-pulling-out scenario of finding your bus not charged for its morning route. When your internet goes down you lose visibility into your charging, but ethernet, through the onsite controller, can keep the charging going. Not all software companies offer ethernet and onsite controllers; these features naturally cost more.
Consider getting a free consultation from a charging software company to analyze your fleet’s needs, i.e. to learn when charging software could start to save you time and money. You give: utility bills, vehicles, route plans. You get: charging analysis including number of chargers you need, type of chargers, cost of managed charging vs. cost of unmanaged charging. You can also incorporate solar arrays, existing or planned, into the analysis. (10% of school districts have some solar panels, with many more planning them; solar is the cheapest form of new energy, and works well in most states.) One way to set up a free consultation would be by contacting Sam Hill-Cristol at sam.hill@mobilityhouse.com.
I’m delivering a TEDx talk on ESBs on November 15th in person in Vancouver, Washington. It’s part of a Countdown series on climate change. I feel nervous, and am preparing at length, hoping to do justice to this topic. I’m focusing on a core concept of the MOVER project I’ve mentioned before: the potential of ESBs to discharge energy from their massive battery packs into resilience centers to fuel and sustain communities during power outages. (Extreme weather events are making power outages more frequent and more disastrous, especially to vulnerable people). I’m also endorsing repowers, and noting that ESBs can improve people’s lives in general.
Would you consider helping me by giving me feedback on a Zoom practice presentation of my TEDx talk? Monday November 13th at 9 a.m. PST, 11 a.m. CST, noon EST: register here. Susan Mudd is kindly moderating. If you’re interested but that day/time doesn’t work for you, please reply and I can set up another practice with you (dozens of practices are my goal). Thanks!
More to know about:
- CALSTART’s ESB Network National Forum Series, starting Nov. 8th: register here
- Webinar on Demystifying Finance: Opportunities to Scale the Adoption of ESBs (paying for ESBs outside of grants and rebates): Nov 8th, noon PST/ 3 p.m. EST: register here
- WASBE Forum Tue. November 14th, – Women Accelerating School Bus Electrification, noon PST, 3 pm Central
- Texas is now funding repowers through its Volkswagen fund
- EPA’s Clean School Bus Program webinars, ongoing, on applying for funding, etc.
- New Jersey Electric School Bus Buyer’s Guide
I’ll be attending School Transportation News’ (STN’s) Transporting Students With Disabilities (TSD) Conference November 16-19 in Texas, and then writing an ESB focused blog piece for STN about it. Let’s note that special ed students are especially vulnerable to toxic diesel emissions, and the high idle times involved in pick-ups and drop-offs give them and the drivers higher exposure. I’m looking forward to the conference’s ESB session, moderated by the dynamic women founders of Texas Electric School Bus Project.
Financial support for this newsletter is provided in part by the World Resources Institute. While the World Resources Institute may engage as a partner on content, it does not control, nor does it necessarily endorse, the contents of this newsletter.
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.
Whose land are you on?