Top Ten FAQ's On Electric Buses

It's been a harsh year. That's especially true for people who ride buses. I do see electrification of bus fleets as one of the most transformative things we can devote ourselves to. Replacing diesel buses with electric address inequity, improves public health and battles climate change. We&#;re building a clean energy economy together, and our new federal administration intends to help. In this article I address frequently asked questions on the admittedly challenging work of electrifying our bus fleets.

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1.) Where can I find funding for electric school buses (ESB&#;s)? Most ESB funding comes from Volkswagen settlement sources (Colorado has become very active here recently, on the heels of many other states) or from utilities. The latter helps explain why I write a lot about utilities. If you&#;re in California, Air Quality Service Districts are also a prime source of ESB funding. A bus yard needs to be in a utility&#;s service territory to be eligible for its funding programs (see 3. below).

2.) How can we serve equity and racial justice in our electric bus project? Crucial question. I&#;ve much yet to learn, but this I know: engage the right people, listen, and incorporate what you learn into your work. It&#;s easy for white people, including myself in the past, to think, &#;I&#;m not racist, neither is my organization, plus our bus-lines serve mostly low-income people already, so we&#;re good to go here, thanks!&#; This thinking denies deep-seated inequity and doesn&#;t move fairness forward.

I just worked on a proposal involving ESB&#;s and vehicle to grid (V2G), and learned in discussion with a Latinx-focused nonprofit that the children of its community live within half a mile of their school. This means they don&#;t get to ride a school bus of any type, and parents are distressed about their kids walking to school on unsafe, sidewalk-less, heavily trafficked streets. I need to not be an ESB fanatic here, not be a hammer insisting that things be nails. I need to support this community&#;s agenda, rather than insist on my own, and also learn where ESB&#;s may be more relevant.3.) What are the different kinds of electric utilities? I&#;m so glad you asked! While all three types have funded e-buses and partnered with fleets on pilot projects, they have key differences. From small to large:

• Co-ops, member-owned, generally rural, not for profit. Local decision-making by co-op board.
• Municipal utilities and public utility districts (PUD's), city or regionally owned, not for profit, governed by city councils or a board.
• Investor owned utilities (IOU&#;s), for profit. Regulated by states&#; utility commissions. Examples: Xcel, Pacific Gas & Electric, Dominion Energy.

4.) What will be the hardest part of my e-bus project? Besides truly baking equity into your project, charging infrastructure is the hardest part. Start on it early. It&#;s often termed EVSE for Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. Many original equipment manufacturers (OEM&#;s) and vendors produce charging infrastructure. See jargony utility terms in 7.) below.

• 5.) Which OEM has the most electric school buses on the road? The buses &#; the fun part! Lion Electric manufactured about 4/5 of the 500 plus ESB&#;s on the road in North America, and is the only school bus OEM focused on electrified transportation. Blue Bird, a traditional, incumbent OEM, celebrated its 100th ESB delivered some months ago. Thomas Built, the incumbent peer of Blue Bird, recently started delivering its first ESB&#;s, mostly to various school districts in Virginia, through Dominion Energy&#;s large funding venture, but also one to Tok, Alaska.

6.) Will my utility be responsible for my charging equipment? Counterintuitively, no. One utility ESB expert says, &#;Think of your chargers as appliances&#;. He means that utilities see chargers the way they see refrigerators, i.e., their job is to supply the electricity, not ensure the appliance will perform well. Look to your EVSE manufacturer (or installer, they&#;ll often be different vendors) to address performance issues. But as I've written many times, your utility is a crucial partner in planning your charging (fueling) needs.

7). What do these jargony utility terms mean?

• Behind the meter: the parts of the charging infrastructure that are the bus fleet&#;s responsibility. Utilities sees their conduits, transformers, etc as being on their side of the meter, or in front of it.
• &#;Make ready&#; &#; ready for what? Ready for a fleet to install one or more electric chargers. When the utility has installed conduit, wire and concrete pad so that the site is ready for vehicle chargers, it&#;s done a make ready.
• Bidirectional (two-way) charging: Most ESB&#;s are equipped to feed energy back into the electric grid as well as receive energy from the grid. (More theoretical than practical yet; see V2G below). A bus can do only one of these at a time; it must be out of service, parked and plugged into its charging infrastructure to either receive or send energy.
• AC/DC: Kick-ass rock band of the olden days, best song being &#;You Shook Me All Night Long&#;, to which I choreographed a modern dance number in November of at Wake Forest University. I digress. My COVID stir-craziness sends me down memory lane.
• AC vs. DC: alternating current vs direct current. AC is the form of electricity we receive from a wall outlet. The bulk of our electricity grid is AC power moving from where it's generated to our homes or businesses -- or to a bus with Level 2 charging. For ESB's, electricity can be converted to DC power to deliver high power levels (a fast charge) aka Level 3 charging, also known as fast, direct or DCFC (direct current fast charging). DC/fast chargers are 7-10x more expensive than Level 2 chargers.
• Demand charges: Utility fees applied to the highest amount of power used in a billing period. (It costs the utility extra money to have large amounts of power on tap at a moment&#;s notice.) Comparable to speeding tickets, demand charges can erase the intended fuel savings of electric buses. Which leads us to . . .
• Managed charging: key to achieving fuel savings with electric buses. Energy is generally cheaper during low-use times, such as late night/early morning, and more expensive during peak use, such as late afternoon/early evening. A confusing (to me, at least) array of vendors offer various technologies that coordinate e-bus charging with utility rates and tariffs to maximize a fleet&#;s fuel savings.

8.) What is V2G? It&#;s vehicle to grid services, where battery electric vehicles of any type would feed energy back into the grid when the utility&#;s service territory is low on energy. Coal is being phased out as an energy source, and solar power, the fastest-growing source of new energy, pairs very well with V2G, which pairs well with ESB&#;s. Fleets of ESB&#;s supplying V2G could avert the building of costly new energy plants. V2G is being piloted in many places with ESB&#;s, but I&#;m told real viability is still five years out.

9.) Why are utilities willing to fund ESB&#;s but not electric public transit buses? School bus battery-banks are available for V2G services a much higher percentage of the time. Crucially, school buses are parked most of the summer, which is when many utilities have peak demand on their electricity and need infusions of energy, and when risk of wildfire makes utilities most likely to shut power off altogether. (Note that these Public System Power Shutoffs have the harshest impact on low income people.)

10.) Is it worth it to pay 7-9x more for fast charging? It depends on your vision and goals for your fleet. The average school bus that operates just 5.5 hours/day, 180 days/year would have ample time to charge for eight hours at Level 2, which is very affordable to install. And some V2G projects, especially outside the U.S., work fine with Level 2.

But some utilities, generally large IOU's, want the much larger, faster energy exchange of DC/Level 3 to support their V2G plans, and are willing to pay 7-9x more for it. They may then have a degree of control or ownership over your charging and therefore your fleet.

So, the answer to this question depends on who&#;s paying, and particularly on what your goals and vision are for your fleet. And it&#;s good to get clear on those early on, in any event. Networking and learning from other bus fleets in the process of electrifying is crucial. Happily, I'll soon be starting a project in which I'll be helping fleets to do that.