someone a couple of hours each day to ensure charge sessions were completing on time,” Wood said. “Now it takes a matter of seconds.” He said the automation improves reliability, helps STA
scale more efficiently, and allows local teams to focus on day-to-day operations instead of manually managing individual charge sessions. Without the program, on-site personnel would need to intervene manually, or Wood would need to update state-of-charge limits day to day. That creates more room for error and increases the risk of a bus not having enough charge for a driver to feel com- fortable taking it on a route. “We want to run these electric buses as much as possi-
ble, ideally 100 percent of the time. But if the driver isn’t comfortable, they’ll take an alternative ICE vehicle,” Wood said. “In general, this program is to reduce this manual in- tervention to prevent any error and maximize operational confidence in these electric vehicles regardless of the weather outside. We want this to run in the background where most people don’t need to think about it. It allows us to deploy at scale without adding much additional time spent managing each individual charger.”
Benefits of Charge Management In general, school districts rely on charge
management software (CMS) for helping lower fueling costs, automating the reporting burden, and proving a real-time window into charging operations, said Russell Schmidt, vice president of digital products at InCharge. This, he added, is so transportation and fleet directors can manage service, check on charging sessions and get alerted when there are problems. Lastly, he said, CMS can help overcome some of the range reduction you see in extreme hot and cold by enabling battery preconditioning.
Climate solutions are our
specialty We also install luggage boxes, Cameras, GPS, Mirrors, and more
68 School Transportation News • JULY 2026
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
