While some students enjoy summer break, their school buses are still hard at work. Rather than transporting pupils, they’re hauling electrons and supporting the grid during critical periods of peak electricity demand.
Such is one of the tantalizing promises of vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, technology, and it’s far from fantasy. More than 30 utilities across 21 U.S. states currently have V2G school bus projects, from California to Connecticut, North Carolina up to Massachusetts. Since they can charge their beefy batteries of 200 kilowatt-hours or more when power prices are low, the peak-shavers-on-wheels are proving to be a valuable tool for utilities, especially as demand surges and affordability discussions grow louder.
And applications go beyond buses. More broadly, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology enables batteries to communicate with and be discharged to external systems, whether that’s an electric vehicle (EV) or something else. Such virtual power plant (VPP) programs are still in their infancy, and regulatory frameworks and standards to support them are far from established, but early studies are beginning to tease out the enticing possibilities for managing EV charging and smart battery dispatch.
On this episode of the Factor This Policycast, the latest in a series presented in partnership with national business association Advanced Energy United, we dive into a world where smart charging plays a critical role in grid reliability and keeping electricity prices manageable.
Host Paul Gerke leads a discussion between electrifying transportation policy principal Elizabeth Stears of Advanced Energy United and Leah Brams, market development manager at Highland Electric Fleets, an electrification-as-a-service provider helping school districts, local governments, and commercial fleet owners affordably convert their traditional diesel vehicle fleets to EVs. They outline the policy reforms needed to unlock V2X’s potential and identify the roadblocks to wider adoption. Brams and Stears identify how utilities can best leverage such technologies and share learnings from pilots- what works, what doesn’t, and how we can refine policy to roll idling electric buses into peak-demand squashers.
Listen to the audio-only version of the episode:
New episodes of the Factor This Policycast go live at 6 am ET every other Thursday.
Promising potential
A report published this month, authored by Gridlab, the UC Davis Energy & Efficiency Institute, Kevala, and E3, titled Unlocking California’s Flexible Load: A Durable Blueprint for Affordability and Reliability, highlights the impact managed EV charging can have on a state’s energy needs. For example, enrolling just 10% of the state’s electric vehicles in V2G programs by 2036 could provide about 9 gigawatts (GW) of 12-hour storage, more than one-third of the state’s long-duration storage procurement target.
“EVs and electric school buses in particular, they are such a wonderfully flexible load, which is pretty unique, especially when we think about other sources of large load on the grid,” noted Advanced Energy United’s Stears.
A separate GridLab study with The Brattle Group, published in 2024, found that virtual power plants could save California utilities and consumers $550 million annually.
“We’ve had vehicle-to-grid charging pilots ongoing for the past five years,” Highland Electric Fleets’ Brams explained. “But we’ve really seen an upswing in the opportunities and the enthusiasm and the available technology that’s kind of all coming together in this exciting moment where I think we can do a lot of really big things.”
The magic school bus
The bulky batteries inside electric school buses can provide valuable grid services year-round, but they are especially valuable during the summer and in the evenings.
“When a school bus comes back to its depot at the end of the day, that’s usually around like four or 5 p.m. when the rest of the population is coming home, and we’re seeing those really big spikes on the grid,” explained Stears. “And most school buses are available during the summer to be able to be utilized kind of full blast as a battery resource. They are uniquely positioned to help bring down scary summer peaks, as well as those daily peaks that we can see from just normal consumption.”
According to Brams, the average electric school bus battery is 200 kilowatt-hours, or roughly 15 times the capacity of a Tesla Powerwall.
“They’re massive batteries on wheels,” she confirmed. By taking advantage of time-of-use rates, fleet operators can save a lot of money, incentivizing their participation even without implementation of a larger V2G program. When drawing one up, both Brams and Stears suggest keeping things as flexible as possible.
“It’s so important to design programs that understand both the benefits and the challenges of all of the DERs that are included,” reflected Stears. “Not all school districts use their buses the same way, but allowing for some flexibility and diversity of programs is so critical to make sure we’re fully tapping into all of the magic of the school bus.”
Learn more
External links discussed on the show:
The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future, by Gretchen Bakke
