Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Power Education Transportation

Virginia Has Big Plans For Electric School Buses In 2020 (arstechnica.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Dominion Energy, the utility that supplies the Commonwealth of Virginia with most of its electricity, is about to begin an ambitious plan to roll out electric school buses in the state that will store electricity when not ferrying kids to school. "Earlier this week, it was announced that phase one, which begins in 2020, will start with 50 electric school buses built by Thomas Built Buses in partnership with Proterra and Daimler Trucks," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The buses will be Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouleys, an electric version of one of TBB's existing buses. Each one will carry 220kWh of lithium-ion battery storage for a range of about 134 miles (216km), and they will recharge in about three hours using Proterra's 60kW DC fast charging system.

Dominion Energy says that replacing a single diesel school bus with an EV bus has the same effect as taking more than five gasoline cars off the road, and by 2025 it hopes to have deployed 1,000 EV school buses to the Commonwealth. Should all go well, it wants 50 percent of Virginia's school bus fleet to be battery electric by 2030. The utility is offsetting the costs to school districts, in part because it wants to use the buses for vehicle-to-grid storage when they're not on the school run. In fact, a school district's suitability for V2G is the main determining factor in deciding which districts will be chosen for the first 50 buses.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Virginia Has Big Plans For Electric School Buses In 2020 More

Virginia Has Big Plans For Electric School Buses In 2020

Comments Filter:

  • Electric Busses are gonna eat Diesel's lunch (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Thursday December 19, 2019 @09:10PM (#59540108) Homepage Journal

    I live near where the tourist buses park. There are a huge number of tourist buses that are parked overnight, then drive ~60 miles to a hotel, pick up a bunch of (often asian) clients, drive them to the four to six tourist traps scattered about the city, about 20 miles worth of driving with "full load", then drive home about 60 miles back to the overnight lot, possibly stopping off to fill up on diesel.
     
    That's not a whole lot different from school buses.
     
    If you look at what brand name diesel engine companies charge for parts, what a full time diesel mechanic costs, variable fuel costs, plus the noise/environmental havoc they create... electric buses are probably going to get here a lot faster than electric cars. They're also going to make cities a lot quieter. Average idle rumble of a commercial grade diesel engine permeates through walls and can be heard blocks away, sometimes even the next street over.
     
    China is rapidly expanding into the electric bus market, some would even say they have it cornered; A 56 seat tour bus (average size) with a 300 mile range would probably be successful in 96% of applications; a 450 mile extended range model would cover the other 4% (ski bus, long distance/grayhound long haul line). Plus you have the average city bus which probably only does 300 miles in a day. LiFePo battery tech (the slightly heavier, industrial grade alternative to laptop batteries) is getting really cheap, and is significantly safer too.

    • LiFePo4 isn't "industrial", it's just harder to set on fire by exceeding the rated discharge rate. It also costs a lot more than LiPo (much more flammable) or basic Li-Ion (moderately flammable.) Once you get any of them burning, though, they're all hard to put out.

      Li-Ion is still the cheapest lithium battery by a wide margin.

    • If you look at what brand name diesel engine companies charge for parts, what a full time diesel mechanic costs, variable fuel costs, plus the noise/environmental havoc they create... electric buses are probably going to get here a lot faster than electric cars.

      Diesel is actually the most efficient fuel you can burn in an ICE engine. Because it works by compressing the fuel until it auto-ignites, the burn is extremely efficient. Larger diesel engines in generators, ships, trains, etc. can hit about 55%

      • Diesel trucks can usually manage about 45% efficiency. That's better efficiency than an EV charged with electricity generated from a fossil fuel plant (about 40% efficiency for a coal plant, 60% efficiency for a gas plant * 95% transmission efficiency * 85% battery charging efficiency * 85% discharge efficiency = 27% or 41% efficiency overall).

        If you penalize EVs for the inefficiency of producing and transporting electricity you should apply the same rules to diesel. Raw oil needs to be extracted (which uses energy), transported from the extraction point to the refinery (more energy), then refined. Refineries use a lot of energy: petroleum refining is the second most energy-intensive manufacturing industry in the United States, and accounted for about 7 percent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2002 (numbers from here [energy.gov]). After refining, the fuel

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        That's better efficiency than an EV charged with electricity generated from a fossil fuel plant (about 40% efficiency for a coal plant, 60% efficiency for a gas plant * 95% transmission efficiency * 85% battery charging efficiency [teslamotorsclub.com] * 85% discharge efficiency = 27% or 41% efficiency overall).

        Except an EV is easily 3-5 times as efficient energy wise than a ICE engine or a diesel engine. That's why even the lousiest of lousy EVs get 100MPGe (most are getting 125-150MPGe) over a diesel or

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        Larger diesel engines in generators, ships, trains, etc. can hit about 55% efficiency. Diesel trucks can usually manage about 45% efficiency.

        In a laboratory using a new engine maybe. The nearly worn out, marginally maintained buses being abused by most school systems need not apply.

    • , what a full time diesel mechanic costs

      And what do certified, authorized, unionized electro-mechs earn?

      The sad part about this stems from recharging these batteries. Batteries are not used to charge batteries. Power plants are used, running on oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear supplemented with wind and solar energy. 100+ years of internal combustion engines and still piss poor milage. Supposedly we went to the moon, send spacecraft out to the edge of our solar system and yet, fuel milage still resides in the 19th century. What gives?

      There are

  • Sorry, kids (Score:1, Informative)

    by jimcooncat ( 605197 )
    The grid wanted the electricity back over lunchtime so you'll have to walk home from school today.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      The grid will be wanting to dump power over lunchtime. That is when solar will be reaching it's peak output. The buses will be sucking down that excess, and using it for the afternoon drive home. After that, there will still be a few hours of daylight to pump the batteries back up before the buses will used to feed the evening peak draw when everyone gets home to run their appliances. The buses will then do a slow draw overnight as an off-peak load.

      Unfortunately, the kids will be disappointed that thei

  • Each one will carry 220kWh of lithium-ion battery storage for a range of about 134 miles (216km), and they will recharge in about three hours using Proterra's 60kW DC fast charging system.

    60KW DC for three hours is a max of 180KWh. So it might be better to say "they will recharge in about four hours". Unless they're assuming that 20% of the energy in the battery is off limits for other uses....

    • Re:three hours? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday December 20, 2019 @12:48AM (#59540464)

      Unless they're assuming that 20% of the energy in the battery is off limits for other uses....

      That is exactly what EVs do. The vast majority of the wear on a Li-ion battery [batteryuniversity.com] comes from topping it up to 100% charge, or discharging it to 0% charge. If you've ever had a laptop battery which only lasted 5 minutes, that's what happened to it. You charged it to 100% or discharged it to 0% too often, and killed it.

      The strategy EV manufacturers (and many laptop makers) have adopted to ward this off is to make the charge extremes off-limits. They'll limit the battery's usage to between 10%-90% charge, or 20%-80% charge in order to maximize its lifespan. If you've been having problems with the battery in your electronic devices dying after just a year or two, you can do this too. Don't charge it up to 100%, don't let it discharge close to 0%. Take it off the charger somewhere between 80%-90%. And put it back on the charger when it drops below 20% My device batteries have lasted 3+ years with very little decrease in battery life ever since I began doing this ("+" because none of them have actually died before I replaced the device). Several laptop vendors include a software tool to limit the max charge % to help with this.

  • How about no school buses (Score:3)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Thursday December 19, 2019 @11:06PM (#59540284)
    Where I live (Ottawa, Canada) almost every kid in a house built in the last 40 years is buses to school. Some how we managed to essentially ban walking in the new parts of my city and decided every kid should spend an hour of their lives on a school bus instead of enjoying the walk outside with friends to and from school. My friend teaches in a 120 year old school. The last snow day all his students showed up because even 5 year olds can walk in 10cm (4") of snow. So maybe, I know this might sound wild, but we should design our cities like how our grand parents did it, where people walked, there were nice small shops, we met our neighbours, we even sometimes shared a wall or too with our neighbours. It's great for our fitness, our mental health, our kids, our wallets and we save the environment. As an added bonus it's good for the economy because renters or even people living a central place are more likely to change jobs making the labour market more mobile.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The problem for that is the IQ levels locally in the USA.
      All the best people would walk to a really great education in a good part of the city, state.
      Below and well below average areas would accept the local well below average students..
      The result show in every generation of testing and be hard for a gov to talk about.

      The US has a way around that. The bus.
      The bus can transport some for the below average students to areas with a good average result in education levels.
      The really low and below average

  • Solutions! YAY! (Score:3)

    by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@@@earthlink...net> on Thursday December 19, 2019 @11:50PM (#59540356)

    For the first time in a long time I'm seeing Slashdot discuss solutions to global warming instead of another doom and gloom story about how fucked we are because of global warming.

    School buses seems like a very appropriate application for electric vehicles. The mass moved is not too high, the distance traveled is short, there's a long time in the middle of the day to recharge, and it has a bonus on improving air quality around schools and homes.

    We'll still need synthesized carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels for things like long haul trucks and aircraft. The buses will need a carbon neutral source of electricity. And the school will probably need to keep some diesel buses for long trips for sport events and day trips.

    See? We got this problem solved.

    • This. Exactly this. School buses run twice a day, a predictable route, and have a lot of room for batteries. If a school district goes with this, it doesn't mean cheaper fuel costs, it means cheaper upkeep costs, because electric motors are a lot cheaper to keep going than IC engines, transmissions, and the mechanical systems that go with those.

      It gives me hope seeing common sense things like this, which actively do something to combat climate change, as opposed to more doomsday scenarios that can't be d

      • It means both cheaper fuel costs and cheaper upkeep. The upkeep costs aren't sufficient argument on their own, because an electric bus costs MUCH more, and it only costs about ten grand to repower a bus with a remanufactured engine. When a new bus costs over 100k that's really not that much. But most medium duty diesels have a B50 of somewhere between 500k and one million miles, so cold climates aside (where there is a lot of idling) most buses make it to their typical 10 year end of life without a major en

      • Actually, blue bird both pioneered the modern electric school bus (back in '96, with a mere 100 mile range) but also sells them now (with a 200 mile range.) But their build quality has reportedly slipped in recent years (I'm in a Fb group for blue bird school and transit buses since we have a bus that bridges both worlds, a 1999 Q-Bus which was a former Yosemite shuttle and which I am slowly converting to an RV*) so no doubt more buyers are gravitating towards the the Thomas these days. Thomas is now part o

  • ... will they finally have seatbelts?
  • Uses like school bases and transit buses are an excellent use for electric vehicles. Helps get the industry jump started, allows the companies bidding to refine their product, and increases the overall market share. The restrictions of battery life is somewhat overcome by simply plugging it in for the bulk of the day between runs and/or overnight.

    It's a good step....Ilike it.

    Ferret
  • At this time, I would think that Electric Utilities would get smart and provide not just busses, but even Cargo trucks to USPS since those are small and only do say 60 miles / day. They could charge at night time for daytime rate and STILL cost the USPS less than their diesel/gas vehicles, AND the utility would make out like bandits.
  • How else do bus 2a'ers to the FEMA camps?

  • What does free markets look like?

    Getting rid of nasty, smog-billowing diesel engines is what free markets look like.

  • Obviously, the hydrocarbon companies who have embedded their staff into the Trump Executive will want their pound of flesh, and have the Virginian Marxists shot for stealing their profits. But Big Coal may fight back by demanding the electric vehicles be powered from coal-burning power stations, so they will be supporting these Virginian Maoists in their fight against Big Oil.

    Der Trumpenführer will have to support both sides in this fight. Fortunately, he's that much of a moron that he'll be abl

Slashdot Top Deals

Elliptic paraboloids for sale.

Close