With vehicle-to-grid technology, electric school buses can send stored power back to the grid, helping communities and generating revenue for local schools.
At 2 p.m. on a sweltering Tuesday in July in central Oklahoma, John Wiles sat down at his desk and with a few clicks, helped save thousands of dollars for Shawnee Public Schools by sending stored power from four electric school bus batteries back to the Oklahoma Gas & Electric grid.
The night before, Shawnee’s buses had charged to near-full capacity in preparation of the afternoon discharge. Bidirectional chargers would allow them to return power back to the grid using the same ports used for charging.
When Wiles, the school system’s transportation director, pressed discharge, he began a four-hour transfer of more than 800 kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity that would help ensure that the community’s electricity rates stayed level, even during a record-breaking heat wave.
In return, Oklahoma Gas & Electric will credit the school district back at a kWh-rate multiple times what Shawnee Public Schools spent on the charging. All in, it could add up to thousands of dollars in earnings for the district which will go right back into funding local schools.
The school district’s electric school bus fleet has been a win-win for local schools and the community. During the 2024-2025 school year, Shawnee Public Schools saved roughly $40,900 in fuel costs. And now, the district’s buses are helping stabilize power rates for its neighbors.
There’s no such thing as a summer vacation for electric school buses. Even when students are out of school and routes are paused, electric school buses are helping communities, without ever leaving the parking lot.
Electric School Bus Benefits
More than 1,500 U.S. school districts in urban, suburban and rural counties now have at least one electric school bus in their fleet, including Shawnee, which received its first electric school bus in 2023 with help from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program. The district, which serves 3,500 students and eight schools including eight Native tribes, has eight electric school buses — making up half of the district’s full 16-bus fleet. The quieter, no-tailpipe-emission rides are a hit with drivers, and there have been significantly decreased behavioral write-ups for students on routes that switched from diesel-burning buses.
The decreased exposure to air pollution especially benefits young people, whose lungs and brain development are particularly at risk to the damage from diesel exhaust, a known carcinogen. The plumes from diesel-burning bus tailpipes also contain greenhouse gases that worsen climate change, leading to extreme weather that endangers people and nature.
While these are the most easily recognized benefits of electric school buses, a growing number of school districts, including Shawnee, are now tapping into another suite of meaningful advantages.
Electric buses are essentially large mobile batteries. When not in use, these buses can discharge stored energy to another system through “vehicle-to-everything" (V2X) technology. In these instances, they can work like a generator that keeps the electricity on after a storm knocks the power out.
“Vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) technology, one type of V2X, allows buses or other power sources to send energy back to the electric grid. This can mitigate peak energy demand, while compensating the owner of the stored energy.
How Shawnee Public Schools Plugged into Vehicle-to-Grid Technologies
V2X and V2G technologies for electric school buses take advantage of three of the buses’ distinct features: the large batteries (usually over 200 kWh), off-peak and cheaper charging times (at night or when school is out) and convenient availability to discharge (during the day, school hours or summer afternoons — usually when energy demand is highest and the grid is most stretched).
According to the Electric School Bus Initiative, there are currently 32 utilities in 21 states working with local districts to coordinate V2X technology, which can plug electric vehicles into any number of use cases, like providing power to the grid or a building.
In Shawnee’s case, a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation Civic Innovation Challenge and coordination from the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Gas & Electric helped bring V2X to the district this spring. Community and industry partners from the university, IC Bus and InCharge Energy helped set up bidirectional charging stations and software for the buses, a key change that allows the buses to send energy back to the grid.
In preparation for Shawnee’s first V2G attempt, Oklahoma Gas & Electric approached the district about using its 210-kWh electric school buses to send energy back to the grid through the utility’s Business Demand Response program. The program rewards business customers for reducing their demand — or in Shawnee’s case, sending power back to the grid — during periods when the grid could be strained, such as a hot summer day.
"If we can use those demand response programs to effectively avoid increasing our system peak demand for the year, then that allows us to keep rates low for all customers by avoiding additional investment in additional generation,” explains Ryan Jones, manager of innovation for Oklahoma Gas & Electric.
And in exchange, the district earns money for discharging energy, which is paid back in credits that go directly to its electricity bill, freeing up money in the school’s budget that instead could be used to purchase more desks, books or other supplies.
“I think in the long run, it’s going to be so beneficial to Shawnee Public Schools that it’s worth it to me,” Wiles says. “We saved so much money just running the electric bus. Now that we’re going to the V2X, we’re going to save even more money."
California Schools Are Already Earning Revenue
In California, where electric school buses funded with state programs are required to include V2G technology, districts are earning roughly $5,000 per bus per year in Oakland, San Francisco and Fremont.
Fremont, one of the first V2G fleets in the state, is generating revenue through the California Public Utilities Commission's Emergency Load Reduction Program. The five-year pilot project aims to help avoid outages during peak summer months by either paying energy customers to use less energy or buying back electricity supply.
According to Ernest Epley, Fremont’s director of transportation, V2G testing found that one discharge session from one electric bus generated enough energy to power six to 10 homes. The district has 22 total electric school buses and nine bidirectional chargers available, potentially powering up to 90 homes per session.
In San Francisco, a new electric school bus fleet launching in August is set to be the largest in the state. The district fleet, which serves 50,000 students and 122 schools across the county, will be 104 buses and send roughly 3 gigawatt-hours of energy back to the grid each year — that’s the equivalent of powering 300 homes for a year.
Providing Power Where It’s Needed Most
The flexibility of V2X technology can help build community resiliency, especially as climate change contributes to more severe storms and extreme heat that can lead to power outages. With bidirectional charging, electric school buses can become mobile generators to provide power to emergency shelters or crucial appliances like industrial freezers.
Cherokee Boys Club, the school bus contractor for Cherokee Central Schools in the sovereign nation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina, has provided power back to the grid on high-need days since 2023 as part of a local utility V2G pilot program. Last summer, the utility drew power from the buses during a bout of extreme heat. The next step is to configure its 21 electric school buses so each can be used as generators in school buildings that might serve as emergency shelters.
In Shawnee, Wiles is now considering how to deploy the fleet and its newfound V2X capabilities during emergencies. In April 2023, a tornado struck the town and caused power outages that lasted 10 days. The school district lost $18,000 worth of food stored in refrigerators that lost power. In future disasters, Wiles notes that V2X technology might allow the buses to power these appliances.
For some counties that don’t yet have the funds to implement V2G or V2X technology, they’re looking into how the buses themselves can provide shelter. Dan Thomas, the director of administrative services for Glades County in South Florida, says that their team discovered that one of their electric school buses can run its onboard air conditioning for 30 continuous hours on a full charge. Glades is prepared to deploy buses to areas of need in the event of grid failure or a major storm as mobile, daytime cooling relief stations.
“Given how brutal and dangerous the South Florida summer heat can be — especially for at-risk populations during outages that can stretch on for weeks — this capability is a potential lifesaver,” Thomas says. “While it isn’t a strict V2X application, it is a creative way to repurpose our battery capacity and extend the vehicle's value directly to the community when they need it most.”
As the electrical grid comes under new strain, temperatures continue rising and extreme weather strikes more often, electric school buses can help create a more resilient, flexible grid. Even as students are in class during the day or enjoying summer break, their buses are busily working to bring down costs and improve energy reliability.
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