Economics Micro(grid)
Vehicle-to-grid electric storage could eventually keep buses charged for the road and generate dollars for
transportation departments that help power their local communities
Written by Eric Woolson W
A row of V2G chargers for electric school buses.
hen Steven Meersman advises school bus fleet leaders about developing their own transportation grid, the initial feedback doesn’t surprise him. But it may astonish others.
“What we find is that people often overestimate how much they need,” said Meersman, a co-founder of Zenobē, an electric vehicle (EV) fleet and grid-scale battery storage firm that has soared from its three partners in 2017 to more than 240 full-time employees with expertise in electrical engineering, software development, computer sciences and financing. He explains that the first step in building self-reliance and re- silience to grid disturbances is “knowing what you need.”
38 School Transportation News • JUNE 2024
“That starts from the operation: What do you need to do to get kids to school?” Meersman continued. “The bus needs to leave on time with a full tank of gas or, in this case, electrons. And there’s not just one bus. There are multiple buses at the depot. They leave at different times. They have different running boards. So, you have to bring it all the way back to the begin- ning and say, ‘What do I need today when there might be one or five buses going electric and what do I need x-years from now when I’ve got a fully electrified depot? And how do I make
PHOTO COURTESY OF CAJON VALLEY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
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