less than we would for regular diesel.” DeBolt’s district has a regular supplier of commercially available fuel, made from fats, animal, and plant materials for the entire fleet of 105 buses, plus other trucks and district vehicles. DeBolt also said that the infrastructure was already in place. “We
didn’t need to change anything with underground tanks or the fuel pumps. Te process was just to drop in the renewable diesel and we’re ready to go. Tere are places where you can’t even store biodiesel in underground tanks, so biodiesel was never an option for me. Tere are too many problems with it. Renewable diesel, because it is identical to diesel, was the way to go for us. Electric is not quite there for us yet. Tere is range anxiety for us with electric buses. We aren’t a rural district, but our boundaries make the district quite long and skinny. We’ve had renewable diesel for three years, and I’ve had zero issues with the engines. Tere have been no clogged fuel filters, no failed engines, no bad injectors.” A few hours away from San Jose, three electric buses are calling
Calaveras United School District home in 2018. Transportation Supervisor Tessie Reeder said the buses are replacing three older vehicles in her fleet of 40. California’s Rural School Bus Pilot Project helped obtain the $1.1 million needed to purchase the
buses and the three charging stations. “Te range is supposed to be about 100 miles, but our district is about half flat land, and about half foothills,” said Reeder. “We’re putting the electric buses on the lower mileage, flatter routes because hills will drain the batteries, and we’ll plug them in between shifts.” Schmitty and Sons, a school bus, charter, and transit bus com- pany in Lakeville, Minnesota, teamed up with Dakota Electric Company and Great River Energy to buy a $325,000 eLion school bus from Te Lion Electric Company. Te Green River Energy company will provide the electricity for the bus with 100 percent wind generated electricity, and the bus will also charge overnight to take advantage of the lower rates. Powered by wind, the bus has a zero-carbon footprint, and takes between four to five hours to charge.
Tere is a warmer in all the battery packs so that they stay at about 50 degrees to maintain their charge in Minnesota’s winters. “Tis 72-passenger school bus will be used to document the economics of the overall operation, especially the maintenance cost savings. Te maintenance is so much easier with an electric bus, and the cost of batteries is going down by 10 to 15 percent a year,” says Mike Forbord of Schmitty and Sons. “We chose the eLion because it is quiet, safe and can go about a hundred miles on one
42 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2018
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