As video sys-
tems, servers, cloud platforms and AI-en- abled tools require more power, there may be a meaningful
energy cost or sus- tainability consideration for school transportation
operations. Energy and sustainability considerations are usually secondary to
storage, data, security and operational require- ments, said David Wigle, Gatekeeper system and support manager. “On the vehicle side, cameras and DVRs draw
power from the bus electrical system, so districts should confirm the design is appropriate for their fleet and operating conditions,” he said. “On the server and cloud side, higher storage volumes, longer retention, and AI processing can increase infrastructure usage. Districts may want to ask vendors how systems are right-sized, whether analytics can be processed efficiently, and wheth- er hosted environments use modern data center practices to reduce unnecessary power and cool- ing demand.” Moving video management to the cloud can re-
duce the amount of local infrastructure they must power and maintain, said Lori Jetha, vice president of marketing for Safe Fleet/Seon. “By shifting storage and computing responsi- bilities to large-scale cloud providers, districts reduce their reliance on local servers, networking equipment and IT resources,” she added. “While AI and cloud computing do increase energy consumption at the data center level, major cloud providers are continuously investing in efficiency improvements, virtualization technologies and sustainability initiatives.” For transportation departments, the primary benefit is often reduced operational complexity and more efficient use of local resources, she added.
Energy consumption is becoming a consid-
eration, although generally not the primary purchasing factor, said Rob Scott, 247Security senior vice president. “Modern DVRs, cameras and AI processors are
becoming more power efficient and do not place a large load on the school bus battery,” he said. “On the cloud side of things, AI server farms are mass consumers of both power and fresh water. At 247 we do not rely on AI-based cloud comput- ing and use the cloud only to store and process video. Any smart identification features such as stop arm violation and license plate capture hap- pen on device, lowering our power footprint while safeguarding privacy.” Clint Bryer, Safety Vision vice president of
sales for student transportation, said energy and sustainability considerations are a non-issue for transportation operations if they rely on their ven- dor for the end-to-end solution, but if they choose to host and manage most of it on their own, they will incur additional server and resource manage- ment costs. Jamie Warrington, School District of Manatee
County (Florida) transportation services director and Florida Association for Pupil Transportation president said, “any of our video storage is main- tained on our local external hard drives, so there is no server for this task at the district.” Ryan Johnson, Nevada’s Lyon County School
District transportation supervisor, said the district has not experienced any noticeable increase in power consumption or operating costs since im- plementing the new system. “Our previous camera systems frequently malfunctioned and would continue recording overnight, which regularly resulted in dead bus batteries,” he said, adding installing Gatekeeper’s system resulted in improved reliability, reduced maintenance concerns and consistent video performance without creating additional ener- gy-related costs.
- Carol Brzozowski
32 School Transportation News • SEPTEMBER 2026
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