director of transportation for the Twin Rivers Unified District in Sacramento, California. Not only was his district the first to put an electric bus in a fleet but it currently operates more than any other district in the nation. “Here at Twin Rivers, we took 16 of those first buses: eight Lions and eight Trans Tech,” recalled Shannon. “At the moment, we have 30 electric buses: Lions and transit-style Blue Birds, plus we have grant funding to pay for 27 more. We also have a grant from the California Air Re- sources Board to pay for the 82 chargers needed for additional infrastructure.” The journey toward electric buses started
A
about five years ago, when Shannon had $1 mil- lion dollars to spend on new purchases. “I would have gotten about seven traditional buses, but I was able to get 16 electric buses because we had an older fleet,” he recalled. “We were able to leverage that and work with the local air dis- trict and a lot of other people, including a grant writer. After running the electric buses for a year and a half, we’d collected a ton of data. We still collect data, and it proves that electric buses are cheaper to run. Because we have so many buses, it’s a comprehensive study that shows the big picture.”
Offsetting Costs Shannon is working with the local power
company on vehicle-to-grid (V2G) testing with Level 2 (AC) and Level 3 (DC) charging. The goal is to sell the energy stored on the buses back to the utility. “For us, getting those carbon credits means we’re paying zero for fuel,” added Shan- non, who has spoken about the payback on electric at the STN EXPO Reno. “We [still]pay the utility, but we get money back.” But Twin Rivers and other California school
districts have the benefit of multiple state grants in addition to Volkswagen Mitigation Trust Fund dollars at their beckon call. That’s not the case in many other states. Still, Shannon said any school district no matter where they are located can recoup nearly all of their investment. He pointed out that with an electric bus, the
cost of fuel is 80-percent less than his other buses, which include diesel, propane and CNG.
www.stnonline.com 27
mong those forward-thinking transportation leaders who jumped on the alternative fuel bandwagon in the “early days” is Tim Shannon,
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