Learn how electric school buses can serve as energy assets, in a new guide developed by Electrification Coalition and SAFE
Actors across the electric school bus ecosystem – including school districts, manufacturers, utilities, advocates and policymakers – are discussing the potential of rapidly evolving vehicle-to-everything technologies and raising good questions about how to maximize this opportunity in the context of school bus electrification. WRI’s Electric School Bus Initiative is engaging in these discussions and developing resources to advance the collective understanding and experience with this nascent technology. Find out more about our work on this topic below, as well as in available and upcoming resources.
Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology allows an enabled electric school bus connected to a bidirectional charging station to discharge stored energy from its battery to a load (V2L), provide backup power to a building (V2B) or support the larger energy grid (V2G).
The Electric School Bus Initiative has monitored V2X market developments and connected with utilities, manufacturers and school districts to evaluate the progress of V2X pilot projects and learn what policies are being implemented to promote this new technology. Recognizing V2X effectively makes electric school buses into “mobile batteries,” our team explored different use cases that can provide value to fleet operators, local communities and grid managers.
More than just vehicles, electric school buses are also energy assets that can serve critical functions within a community such as providing clean backup power during grid outages from extreme weather events and other emergencies. This service could particularly benefit underserved communities that are often less resilient to grid outages and may lack the resources to respond to emergency events such as hurricanes, wildfires and extreme temperatures.
Committed to promoting equity, the Electric School Bus Initiative directed initial efforts toward determining best practices to deploy electric school buses and V2X technology as resiliency resources within communities that need them the most.
As outlined below, our work focuses on the following:
- Developing an implementation guide and agreement template which describe broadly how an electric school bus and V2X system could provide emergency backup power and create a mechanism for this use case to be included within the widely-used National Incident Management System (NIMS), Incident Command System (ICS) and Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs).
- Producing a forthcoming prescriptive whitepaper that details the equipment and specific steps to discharge energy from an electric school bus to a facility for backup power, including performance data from a real-world pilot that illustrates the technologies’ power provision capabilities.
- Deploying these resources to promote scale-up of the technology and the potential additive value of electric school buses when not being utilized for transportation.
Learn more about our latest work
In March 2022, we selected Securing America’s Future Energy and the Electrification Coalition (SAFE-EC) to produce the implementation guide and agreement template. This work was completed in January 2023, when SAFE-EC held a webinar and announced the release of the V2X Implementation Guide and Mutual Aid Agreement Template for Using Vehicle-to-Everything-Enabled Electric School Buses as Mobile Power Units to Enhance Resilience During Emergencies.
Additional resources:
If you are interested in engaging with WRI on ESBs and V2X, please contact Greggory Kresge (gregg.kresge@wri.org)