In a historic breakthrough for local clean energy, an electric school bus in Beverly, Massachusetts, successfully delivered power back to the electricity grid for more than 50 hours over the course of the summer. This is the first time an electric school bus has been leveraged as an energy resource by the regional utility National Grid in New England and among the first instances in the United States that an electric school bus has supported the electric grid in this way. In conjunction with Highland Electric Fleets and National Grid, a Thomas Built Buses Saf-T-Liner C2 Joule electric school bus equipped with a Proterra Powered battery system discharged nearly three megawatt-hours of electricity stored in the bus to the regional electric grid over the course of 30 events this summer.

Highland, who provides the bus, chargers, and all electricity to Beverly Public Schools under a mileage-based subscription, worked with National Grid to ensure that the site was prepared for energy discharge and coordinated participation in their Connected Solutions Daily Dispatch program. Under this program, National Grid utilized the energy stored in the electric school bus battery on 30 different occasions over the summer to lower demand on the grid during times of peak demand.

Thomas Built’s Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley with Proterra’s bidirectional charging system managed the charging and discharging of the electric school bus back into the grid.

By sending electricity back to the grid when demand for electricity was at its highest and most expensive, the school bus helped reduce local emissions and decreased the need to fire up costly fossil fuel “peaker” plants. National Grid compensates participants in this program for their energy services, incentivizing the use of distributed energy resources to strengthen the local grid.

Participation in National Grid’s program marks an important step in closing the up-front cost gap between traditional diesel school buses and electric school buses, as revenue from vehicle-to-grid (V2G) programs offer a unique means to improve the economics of electric school bus ownership.

The average school bus transports students for approximately six hours a day, 200 days annually, and are otherwise parked or idled when not in operation. This is particularly true during summer months, when demand for electricity is often at its highest and clean energy stored in idled electric school buses can provide an energy resource to the grid.

The Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley offers 226 kWh of total energy capacity from Proterra’s industry-leading battery technology, the highest standard battery capacity in the industry.

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Strategic Research Institute

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