E
very year, the nation’s school buses travel billions of miles, consuming fossil fuel, emitting combus- tion exhaust into the air, and incurring planned and unplanned maintenance costs. In the back-
ground, however, electric school buses are increasingly becoming viable alternatives, but not without challenges. An electric school bus option has only been on the
market for about four years. Adoption has appeared slow when compared to all of the school buses that are manufactured and sold each year. (The latest bus production figures reported by the OEMs were unavailable at press time, but the data will likely come in at less than 1 percent of all builds for the year.) Aside from the initial purchase cost, leading the list of
challenges is a high-end, perfect-world range of about 150 miles in the most favorable conditions. That range is more than sufficient for most urban and suburban routes, but not necessarily so for rural routes or for many activity, field or sports trips. Another culprit is the expensive lithium-ion battery,
but compared to years past, costs have dramatically declined. Then there’s expensive charging infrastructure that can cost a school district as much as $50,000. Add to that a slow payback period that is caused by less run- time than other vehicles, such as over-the-road Class 8 trucks that routinely operate for up to 11 hours per day. This all amounts to a majority of student transporters taking a wait-and-see approach before adopting the vehicles that cost three times more than a comparable diesel, gasoline or an alternative fuel bus. Still, districts from Washington state to Massachusetts
continue to order EVs. As their fleets age, school boards are either scraping together enough money to buy one or two electric buses, or much more likely they are receiving financial assistance. There’s nearly $3 billion available via the Volkswagen settlement and even more through state grants, with California boasting the most of both sources. “Electric transportation as a whole is continuing to
evolve, as new technologies are introduced and mature,” said Julie Furber, vice president for electrified power at Cummins, Inc., the traditional diesel engine manufac- turer that launched its electrification business in 2017. “Schools are very interested in how they can continue to provide safe, reliable transportation using the latest technologies. There is a tremendous amount of funding available for school districts to integrate electric options into their fleets, which is accelerating adoption.” In spite of the financial support, some districts remain
too fearful to take the plunge. “School districts could be slow to adopt, due to the fact that many transportation departments are risk averse,” observed Sudha Veerapa- neni, product marketing director for IC Bus, which is
36 School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2019
expected to build its first production electric school bus next year. “Range anxiety—what we would define as the fear that the bus will run out of power and be stuck on the side of the road—will be a major factor in the adop- tion rate.”
She explained that school districts that serve large geographic areas and run longer routes as a result, may be some of the last to adopt electric school buses, be- cause of this anxiety. “Another factor that we feel will impact adoption
is charging infrastructure,” she added. “School transportation departments will need to determine if they have the space and resources required to introduce a new [energy] type into their operations.” Enter utility companies, which have a lot to gain.
Charged Up Dominion Energy, Virginia’s major utility, recently an- nounced the largest investment to date by an electricity provider. It is fronting the cost difference between a new diesel-powered bus and an electric bus, with a goal of introducing 1,000 school buses into the Commonwealth over the next five years. Plus, it is helping schools with the cost to install charging stations. Helping school districts acquire electric buses not only
reduces their overall carbon footprint, but it purportedly helps with grid power consumption. In essence, Domin- ion and other utilities view electric vehicles as supplying their grids with portable batteries. When electric buses are not in use, they can be
tapped as an energy resource through vehicle-to-grid technology, or V2G. If energy demand and consumption are high (to power air conditioning during a heat wave, for example) or otherwise intermittent, the bus batteries can help stabilize their grid to meet demand. Additionally, the batteries could serve as mobile power stations during a power outage. Cass County Electric Cooperative, which serves nearly 60,000 residential and commercial meters in a 10-county area in southeastern North Dakota, helped fund the pur- chase of a new Blue Bird Vision Electric for West Fargo Public Schools to test. Also participating in the project is Minnotka Power Cooperative, which serves 135,000 customers in eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.
The bus started on its route on Aug. 27. Bradley
Redmond, transportation director for West Fargo, said the Cass County Electric Cooperative contributed $80,000 toward the project, with a state clean energy grant pilot providing about the same amount and the district paying the rest. West Fargo’s share was about 50 percent more than it would normally pay for one of its
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