Building a Scalable and Repeatable School Bus Electrification Business (BuSy Bees)
eIQ Mobility
Recipient
Juno Beach, FL
Recipient Location
$1,867,761
Amount Spent
Active
Project Status
Project Update
Hardware and charging infrastructure (five 60 kW DC bidirectional EVSEs) have been energized since December 21, 2023 at the Richmond site. Project team efforts have focused on engaging with PG&E on finalizing the Rule 21 interconnection, which is expected to complete in 2025. Software testing is underway and expected to complete in 2025. The school bus bidirectional charging demonstration is anticipated to begin later in 2025.
The Issue
School districts and educational transportation service providers adopting electric school buses (eSB) face higher upfront purchase costs and operational challenges related to scheduling vehicle use, monitoring battery capacity, and optimizing charging. Existing software for fleet management needs improvement to include in-use data such as battery state of charge as well as maintenance and operation of charging systems. There are significant opportunities to optimize charging and discharging of eSBs in a manner that minimizes total costs and provides grid services. Additionally, there is a lack of data from field operations regarding the financial benefits and possible battery degradation impacts of long term vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operations.
Project Innovation
The project will design and develop bidirectional charging technologies for electric school buses. It will also generate a viable business case for applying this technology to other school bus fleets across California. The software demonstrated in the project will enable monitoring, charge management, and V2G discharging. The demonstration will participate in PG&E's demand response programs and collect data on several vehicle grid integration (VGI) use cases including charging cost minimization.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
This project will develop and demonstrate software that will optimize bidirectional school bus charging to minimize fleet fueling costs and improve grid reliability by participating in grid services through programs like ELRP.
Reliability
This project helps improve grid reliability through Vehicle Grid Integration. VGI can help reduce peak grid loads by managing the charge rate of the EVSE when the grid is constrained or when an Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) event is active. This ensures the EVSE and EV Buses do not place a significant burden on their local grid.
Equity
This project enables the electrification of 20 school buses and eliminates harmful emissions from the diesel counterparts that they replace. This is especially important given that the demonstration site is located in a disadvantaged and low-income community, which are disproportionately affected by poor air quality.
Key Project Members
Sisana Farley
Subrecipients
Cupertino Electric, Inc.
Rincon Consultants, Inc.
Breathe Southern California
PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY
GDP Group
