School Bus Magic Keeps Grids Stable in Heat

Reuters:

Schools are out for the summer, but the batteries in more than 200 ​electric school buses are helping some people in the U.S. find relief when temperatures soar.

From California to North Carolina, yellow electric school buses are sending power ‌back to the grid, easing some strain when demand spikes during heat waves. Hundreds more are expected to come online.

The stored energy from school buses and other electric vehicles is dwarfed by power plants. But efforts to use their batteries to return power to electrical systems, known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), show how EVs could fortify strained power grids.

Fully deployed V2G projects involving about 230 of the nation’s roughly 6,700 electric school ​buses now have the capacity to supply about 8 megawatt-hours of power at a given time, according to the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Electric School Bus Initiative.

By ​contrast, PJM, the largest U.S. regional grid, will need more than 160,000 megawatts of power this week to meet peak demand for 67 ⁠million people. Much of the U.S. this week has been sweltering under record-breaking temperatures .

“It’s very early days. School buses will be a critically important backbone of V2G capacity,” said Steve ​Letendre, senior advisor to the Vehicle Grid Integration Council trade association.

Electric school buses have large batteries, some exceeding 200 kilowatt-hours. They can charge when demand is low and send power back ​to the utility. They are often idle in the summer, when electricity demand surges.

At least 31 utilities and 21 U.S. states are involved in V2G school bus projects, WRI said.

The number of electric school buses on the road should more than double to around 14,625, or 3% of the total fleet, in the coming years, WRI data showed. Many of those will be V2G-enabled.

Still, capacity from V2G electric ​school bus projects needs to grow exponentially to make a meaningful difference.

Consulting firm ICF forecasts 445,000 megawatts of U.S. grid capacity additions through 2030, partly driven by the data center boom.

Barriers Exist

V2G projects face hurdles including up-front costs and a lack of universal V2G technology. Regulatory frameworks and standards are years away. Electric-vehicle owners and operators face concerns that repeated charging and discharging ‌of a ⁠battery could accelerate battery degradation, and that use of V2G could void a battery warranty.