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An all-electric bus fleet that serves 80 schools in the city of Oakland, California, will soon start discharging energy back into the power grid in the evenings, helping the state to reduce its reliance on polluting gas plants.
“Electric school buses with vehicle-to-grid technology provide students with cleaner, fume-free transportation and allow us to send untapped energy from the bus batteries back to the grid, creating an enormous impact on grid resilience,” says Ritu Narayan, CEO of Zūm, the company that provides the buses and bidirectional charging stations.
Why it matters: America’s current fleet of school buses — the country’s largest form of mass transit — is mostly diesel-powered. It’s a major contributor to the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and to localised air pollution, which can cause childhood asthma and other health conditions.
Electrification helps to address this problem — while simultaneously providing an opportunity to clean up the power grid.
The latest: The Oakland Unified School District’s 74 electric buses, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 25,000 tonnes a year, will start feeding into the grid from August, according to Zūm.
After doing their morning school runs, the buses will return to Zūm’s depot and top their batteries up using cheap solar power from the Californian grid.
Then, after dropping students back home in the afternoon, the buses will send that stored solar energy back into the grid during the evening peak period, when power prices are high.
The backstory: Oakland’s rapid shift to electric buses was partly funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s clean school bus programme, which has allocated enough funds to replace more than 5,000 of the country’s school buses with zero-emission alternatives.
“Oakland becoming the first in the nation to have a 100% electric school bus fleet is a huge win for the Oakland community and the nation as a whole,” says Kim Raney, executive director of transportation at the Oakland Unified School District.
“The families of Oakland are disproportionately disadvantaged and affected by high rates of asthma and exposure to air pollution from diesel fuels,” Raney says. “Providing our students with cleaner and quieter transportation on electric school buses will be a game-changer ensuring they have an equitable and stronger chance of success in the classroom.”
