Electric school buses to provide grid reliability services in PJM market in V2G scheme

LinkedIn
Twitter
Reddit
Facebook
Email

Distributed energy resource (DER) platform Voltus and Highland Electric Fleets have partnered to deliver grid reliability services to the PJM, US, market using electric school buses and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.

The two will cooperate to deliver grid reliability to the PJM wholesale electricity market using electric school buses from Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland, which covers some 160,000 students.

This article requires Premium SubscriptionBasic (FREE) Subscription

Enjoy 12 months of exclusive analysis

  • Regular insight and analysis of the industry’s biggest developments
  • In-depth interviews with the industry’s leading figures
  • Annual digital subscription to the PV Tech Power journal
  • Discounts on Solar Media’s portfolio of events, in-person and virtual

Or continue reading this article for free

Maryland is one of 14 US states which are served by regional transmission organisation (RTO) PJM, all in the northeast of the country.

A press release said the deal represents the largest procurement of electric school buses of any school district in North America to-date, with MCPS’ fleet being the largest.

“School districts like MCPS are leading the way in fleet electrification, delivering not only healthier transportation for students but also providing support for local and regional electric grid reliability,” said Ben Schutzman, vice president of fleet operations at Highland, which offers full-service electrification solutions for fleets of vehicles.

“Partnering with Voltus allows us to offer another value stream to school districts, further lowering the cost of upgrading to electric and also supporting increased renewable energy penetration by making the bus batteries available to utilities and wholesale electricity markets when they’re not being used to transport students,” he added.

Dana Guernsey, Voltus’s chief product officer, said that the entire US school bus fleet would add 29GW of new electric demand across 480,000 buses, adding they were a perfect use case for electrification.

Electrified school bus fleets also offer a great opportunity for V2G technology, thanks to larger battery sizes and more predictable planning of discharging and charging schedules, compared with consumer electric vehicles (EVs).

Voltus’ platform connects nearly 2.6GW of DERs to electric markets, the company claimed.

Another company active in the V2G space, Nuvve, is also eyeing applications for school buses as Energy-Storage.news recently reported.

Student transport supplier Zum Services and AI-driven DER software company AutoGrid announced last year that they would partner to bring 10,000 electric school bus batteries in the US into a virtual power plant resource.

One of the earlier examples was a project from Chinese battery supplier BYD, using the batteries of 100 vehicles in the UK to provide 1.1MW of energy to the grid for balancing services in 2020.

18 March 2025
Sydney, Australia
As we move into 2025, Australia is seeing real movement in emerging as a global ‘green’ superpower, with energy storage at the heart of this. This Summit will explore in-depth the ‘exponential growth of a unique market’, providing a meeting place for investors and developers’ appetite to do business. The second edition will shine a greater spotlight on behind-the-meter developments, with the distribution network being responsible for a large capacity of total energy storage in Australia. Understanding connection issues, the urgency of transitioning to net zero, optimal financial structures, and the industry developments in 2025 and beyond.
26 March 2025
Austin, Texas
The Energy Storage Summit USA is the only place where you are guaranteed to meet all the most important investors, developers, IPPs, RTOs and ISOs, policymakers, utilities, energy buyers, service providers, consultancies and technology providers in one room, to ensure that your deals get done as efficiently as possible. Book your ticket today to join us in 2025!

Read Next

January 23, 2025
CATL has filed a complaint in a US court against system integrator Powin for alleged non-payment of shipments of battery cells for BESS.
January 23, 2025
Not-for-profit consultancy Yarra Energy Foundation (YEF) has said that its Fitzroy North community battery in Melbourne, Australia, generated AU$8,423 in revenue, excluding goods and services tax (GST), for the 2023-24 financial year.
January 22, 2025
Barrett Bilotta, president and CEO at Agilitas Energy, contributes to our Year in Review series, touching on industry growth in 2025, evolving wholesale market rules and an anticipated shift away from lithium-ion battery technology.
January 22, 2025
Modo Energy has signalled that 16.8GW of battery energy storage systems (BESS) will connect to Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) by the end of 2027.
January 21, 2025
PT Sembcorp Renewables Indonesia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore-headquartered engineering firm Sembcorp, and state-owned PT PLN Nusantara Renewables have launched a utility-scale solar-plus-storage project in Indonesia.

Most Popular

Email Newsletter