The grid was melting down in last week’s heat – until EVs came to the rescue
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- Electric school buses with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability fed stored battery power back to the grid during last week's heat wave, helping utilities meet peak demand instead of overloading it.
- The World Resources Institute's Electric School Bus Initiative reports roughly 230 V2G-equipped school buses can supply 8 MWh of power at any given time — enough for about 1,600 typical US homes for up to four hours.
- Oakland Unified School District operates California's largest V2G school bus project, with a fleet of 74 buses adding an estimated 2.1 GWh of clean energy back to the grid annually.
- Steve Letendre, senior advisor to the Vehicle Grid Integration Council, called school buses "a critically important backbone of V2G capacity" though noted it's still "very early days."
- The article calculates that scaling V2G to just half of the roughly 6,700 electric school buses already in US service could yield well over 100 MWh of flexible energy available during peak demand.
- San Francisco Unified School District is set to launch a 104-bus electric fleet next month returning about 3 GWh annually during peak hours, with plans to expand to more than 238 electric buses by 2028.
- Angie White-Banda, transportation supervisor for Glades County School District in Florida, said V2G-equipped buses can double as emergency community shelters during hurricanes — letting residents charge devices and cool off with AC.
Why it matters: V2G capacity from school bus fleets can lower consumer electricity bills by reducing utilities' need to buy expensive peak power on wholesale markets, while also serving as emergency power hubs during storms — turning a transportation fleet into both a cost-saver and a literal lifesaver for vulnerable communities.
