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STN EXPO West and Uncharted Territory
I loved the Green Bus Summit at STN EXPO West in Reno, Nevada. Of course I did. I’m an extrovert, an electric school bus (ESB) nerd ever hungry to learn new things, and I grew up in a desert. This was my sixth STN EXPO conference, and the third I’ve covered for STN as a writer specializing in ESB related topics.
That said, some things not discussed at the Green Bus Summit, at least not officially, are as pressing as the topics that are more popular and comfortable. I’ll get to those in a minute. On the lighter side, part of covering a conference is just listening in general (some might call this eavesdropping). I overheard at the opening reception: “Right, we are not pro-electric, we’re sitting back and letting everybody else work through all the problems before we do anything.”
I get it. If I was already working hard and wouldn’t be paid extra for taking the risks of the ESB path, maybe I’d stay with the status quo of fossil-fueled buses, too. The people running ESBs, though, look as wide-awake, alive and happy as anyone I’ve ever met. And John Wyskiel, president and CEO of Blue Bird, stated that students who ride ESBs arrive at school calmer and more ready to learn.
Technology in general, STN Chief Content Officer Ryan Gray noted, is an increasing theme for the school bus industry. New technology always carries risk. Henry Ford had failures. Diesel was once new and iffy. I liked STN President Tony Corpin’s story of when his parents, Bill and Colette Paul, were starting the magazine up in 1991. Its success was not assured. Blue Bird (and others) gave them a check, a year’s advertising in advance, for the fledgling publication. Their investment implied, “We trust you.” The magazine flourished.
In contrast, the districts that trusted and invested in Lion Electric regret it.
(A few days and after I returned home from Reno, a colleague forwarded me the letter that the newly purchased Lion sent out U.S. owners of Lion Electric school buses. It states their warranties are now void. ESB advocacy groups CALSTART, the Alliance for Electric School Buses and World Resources Institute are working to support Lion owners.)
Related: Previous Lion Electric School Bus Warranties Voided by Company Sale
We heard a lot about Artificial Intelligence (AI) growing rapidly in the school bus world, but little mention of its enormous use of electricity and water. That’s problematic in that power outages and prolonged droughts are on the rise, especially in the West (we were sitting in a Western desert). Should we automatically use AI without limits? Or do we choose how to use it? And do we see ESBs as not just using electricity, but also being able to feed energy back into the grid (V2G), or, more locally and with simpler technology, into a school building during a power outage (V2B)?
First-time STN EXPO attendee Clarissa Castrowore native Navajo dress at the trade show (we were told to dress up). She drives long rural routes for Window Rock Unified School District in Arizona. Window Rock is the capital of the Navajo Nation’s reservation. Castro said, “I like the conference a lot! We have too many-stop arm violations. We need to update our technology.”
For the record, I do not think ESBs are for everybody. For example, I don’t think Window Rock Unified School District in Arizona should pursue them. About 30 percent of residences on the Navajo reservation don’t have electricity yet. I’d think addressing that is a top priority. Literacy rates go up when homes gain electricity (being an ESB nerd makes you an energy nerd, as well).
Jessica Sevilla, director of fleet and facilities at Antelope Valley Schools Transportation Agency in Southern California, runs 230 school buses, 41 of them electric. “The leap between the worlds [from fossil-fueled to electric] is larger than we’d thought. Mechanics are learning to reach for laptops instead of wrenches.”
She emphasized training and said employee openness to ESBs depended partly on “where they’re at in their careers.” In other words, those earlier in their careers may be more open to learning new skills. Other panelists agreed that ESB driving skill has an enormous impact on range. A feather-foot that maximizes regenerative braking can add dozens of miles of range over the course of a day.
Charles Kriete, CEO of Zonar, told us our business is access to education, not necessarily transportation. I’d call that a paradigm shift. In keeping with Kriete’s declaration, Billy Huish, from rural Farmington Municipal Schools in New Mexico, told me he created an extended classroom by providing 71,000 hours of Wi-Fi, so far, to students on his 68 buses.
“What about TikTok?” I asked anxiously. Absolutely blocked, he assured me.
Related: School Bus Wi-Fi in Flux?
Speaking of anxiety, Kriete said parent calls are reduced by 50 percent when they can use an app to see where their child is. I’ve never fielded a concerned parent’s call, but I can imagine the urgency of resolving where the child is, the rising intensity if it takes too long, and both parents’ and dispatchers’ desires to have fewer such calls.
But even if a school district can afford the best ridership verification technology (many can’t), quota-driven ICE raids, with schools and school bus stops no longer protected from them, may lead to children going missing, or maybe more likely, their parents being abruptly swept away, unable to pick up their children. That’s a harrowing thought, especially with due process going missing, in general. Stay with me.
Transportation directors had plenty to say on this topic, on condition of anonymity, that is. One knew of children dropping out of school and afraid to leave the house after relatives were abruptly deported. The families stay quiet because they don’t want to be targeted. Another has children no longer riding the school bus because parents are fearful of ICE.
They still attend school, if their parents can drive them (not all can).
One transportation director, whose district’s policy is for employees to not surrender children to ICE agents, told me his district’s attorneys were unable to answer the following question he posed to them: “Are you making it a job requirement of my bus drivers to defy ICE agents and risk being taken away, themselves? Because some of them have kids at home who’re depending on them.”
I looked steadily, uncomfortably, into my colleague’s eyes. “We’re in uncharted territory,” he told me.
I found that staff with ESBs can be all over the map on how engaged they are with them. One transportation director had received his first two ESBs, but no idea whether he had Level 2 or Level 3 charging. Tracking your charging saves much money, as noted by Bobby Stafford, Anthony Ashley and Craig Beaver in the session, “What You Need To Know About Working With Your Utility.”
Beaver, administrator of transportation at Beaverton School District near Portland, Oregon, was STN’s Transportation Director of the Year in 2024. He reported that when he moved his ESBs from peak charging to off-peak charging, his monthly electricity bills went from $50,000 to $60,000 per month to $30,000 per month.
He advocated for vehicle to building (V2B) as opposed to vehicle to grid (V2G). He cited MOVER (Microgrid Opportunities: Vehicles Enhancing Resiliency) project (disclosure: I am among the partners in this project) in Hood River, Oregon. Beaver sees V2G as needing more time to develop. The most successful V2G program is run by Zum for Oakland Unified School District in California. Zum reports 75 ESBs are discharging 2.1 gigawatts back into the Pacific Gas and Electric grid annually, enough to power 300 homes for a year.
In contrast to the Zum V2G project, V2B projects would be under local control. Beaver is building a microgrid with Portland General Electric, his utility, that he reported has been excellent to work with. Ashley, the director of fleet for Atlanta Public Schools, reported a “less flowery experience” with Georgia Electric He advised his peers to do their research before signing a contract with their utility.
Beaver floated the idea of a Fire Relief Center for his microgrid, fueled in part by his ESBs. Heat is by far the most fatal form of extreme weather, and children are more vulnerable to extreme heat than adults. My Tedx talk on ESBs dramatizes a heat-dome scenario in which ESBs discharge energy into a community resilience center, cooling people in an outage, potentially saving lives.
Reno itself was just named the fastest warming city in the U.S. for the second year in a row. Were you out there, sweating along with me at the Ride and Drive? Can you imagine the air conditioning at the Reno conference failing for even a day? I suggest we start to imagine it. Power outages are growing nationwide as temperatures keep rising, energy loads keep growing, and the aging electric grid falters.
I do not sell ESBs or push them on anyone. I think keeping kids in school, safely learning and growing, is our core mission. I do suggest that accessing the motherlode of energy housed in our nation’s 5,000 electric school buses is a good additional mission, in our increasingly hot, anxious, energy-hungry country.
Alison Wiley is a transportation electrification professional who helps bus fleets make the transition from diesel to electric. She produces the the Electric School Bus Newsletter and gave a TedTalk last year that advocates for the use of electric school buses as a tool of equity and inclusion. She is based in Portland, Oregon.
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