How your child’s school bus might prevent blackouts while sitting idle
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — The four vehicles parked at a depot in South Burlington, Vermont, look no differ- ent from the yellow school buses familiar to millions of schoolchildren. But beneath their steel shells, these buses are packed with technology that could be vital in the tran- sition to clean energy.
e their ma n job rema ns ansporting chi dren, the vehi estakeonasecondtaskwh e tting idle dur ng school hours
e local ut lity puts their bat- teries to work, storing excess renewable energy so it can be pumped back into the grid when needed.
The buses are a test of the idea that electric vehicles, which skeptics often see as an expens ve burden that could bring down electric grids, could be just the opposite: a buffer that soaks up power when there is too much and provides it when demand for electricity surges.
Any sui ably equipped electric vehicle can be used to store surplus electricity, avoiding the need for utilities to fire up gas-fueled power plants when thereisn’tenoughsunorwi d. But school buses work especially well because they have big batteries and spend much of the day parked.
“There’s no better tool than an electric school bus fleet to sort of smooth those curves,” said Duncan Mc ntyre, the CEO of Highland Fleets, a company near Boston that provides the buses and equipment. Synop, a New York firm, provides the software to manage the inter- tion between vehicles, char- rs and the grid. Utilities across the country
e been testing the ability
of batteries in electric vehi- cles to help stabilize increas- ingly unreliable power plants and lines that have faltered under stress from hurri- canes, heat waves and other
extreme weather linked to cli- mate change.
Grueling summer heat this year tested the Texas grid for weeks, forcing offic als to plead with homeowners and businesses to use less energy so the ate could avoid rolling black-
s or the kind of power fail- ure that left millions of people wi hout light or heat in 2021.
Some energy experts say one solution to these prob- lems is to corral thousands of rooftop solar panels, home batteries and electric vehicles around a city or state into vir- tual power plants. Tethered together wi h the help of soft
re, the collective capacity of such devices to generate and store energy can be more than enough to avoid a black-
when power plants falter or strong winds take down a transmission line.
Grids primarily use power plants with quick-start abili- ties, known as peaking units, to serve as backup sources of energy. But such plants typi- cally use gas, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and are expensive to run and ma ntain. Many have also fai ed to perform when they are most needed.
Electric school buses, in parcular, could be very useful to the grid because of their limited use dur ng school days and
ad avai ability during summe ’sswe eringtemperatures. Schools in every state except oming have committed to begin using electric buses, though the number on the roads is small at fewer than 3,000 as of June 30, according the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit that works on the energy, environment and related issues.
The World Resources Institute is pushing U.S. policymakers to make sure all school buses are battery-powered by 2030, a goal that would also reduce asthma and other diseases in children by eliminating pollution from combustion-engine buses.