(The Center Square) – With cold weather and long distances, eastern Washington state would seem an unlikely region to find school district officials excited about electric buses.
Mike McCain, transportation director for the Reardan-Edwall School District, is looking forward to the experiment.
“If it doesn’t work, we can always park it,” McCain said.
His first two electric school buses are still in production, and delivery is scheduled for March. The district has also ordered one new diesel bus.
“We’ll be able to compare maintenance and operating costs side by side,” he said.
“Parking it” from about Nov. 1 to March 1 is what the Republic School District has had to do with its first electric school bus, put into service in 2021.
“The main thing is the cold weather when it’s hovering around zero to ten above,” said Jim Burnside, transportation supervisor for the district. “The Blue Bird [school bus manufacturer] will not keep up with the heating.”
McCain and Burnside both ordered the optional auxiliary diesel heater on the International brand electric vehicle buses due for delivery this year.
Grants will pay for the basic bus; districts will pay for optional upgrades to meet local conditions, including auxiliary heat, thicker insulation and automatic tire chains.
“We’re really lucky because we’re getting the grants,” Burnside said. “Outright buying electric instead of diesel would be unfeasible if had to come out of my budget.”
Depending on the options, the electric buses range from $389,000 to $455,000 each. A standard diesel bus costs $150,000 to $185,000.
RWC Group took the lead in submitting federal and state grant requests for 33 buses for a group of rural districts in order to meet the 15-bus minimum required by the grant. RWC Group is a commercial truck and bus operation with 17 dealerships and 800 employees operating in five states.
McCain and his crew of 1.5 full-time mechanics in the past have rebuilt three engines and handled most repairs in-house. McCain checked into getting his crew trained for EV bus repairs, but the systems are proprietary. Most maintenance will have to be contracted out since repairs are electrical rather than mechanical.
“We have a good working relationship with RWC,” McCain said. “There are two mobile repair technicians and we try to stay in touch with other districts to coordinate.”
For the Republic and Reardan-Edwall school districts, getting two grants fully covered the cost of both the bus and the infrastructure improvements.
In Republic, Burnside said the Ferry County PUD worked closely with the district to upgrade a transformer and the wiring to the bus barn.
In Reardan, Avista Utilities placed a dozen conduits a little over two blocks from an upgraded transformer to eventually serve all twelve daily bus routes. Wire has been pulled only for the first two charging stations.
One charger will be a slow alternating current unit that requires about six hours to fully recharge, and the other will be a fast direct current unit that requires one hour to recharge.
“The range should be about 200 miles,” McCain said.
He plans to assign one new EV bus to his longest route, covering 105 miles each day.
The district has 22 buses in its inventory, although only 14 are still on the state depreciation schedule. State depreciation payments go into a fund assuming the purchase of a replacement bus at the end of 13 years.
“We don’t collect enough in depreciation payments to buy enough replacements as buses go off the schedule,” McCain said. “We have to run our buses longer than 13 years.”
McCain is concerned about the 10-year battery life projected for EV buses mismatched with the 13-year depreciation schedule.
One incentive to adopt EVs for rural districts with many older buses is the higher depreciation payments based on the more expensive electric buses base cost, even though grants covered the original purchase.
Districts must pay for the buses up front and only receive reimbursement after putting the new EV bus in service and providing proof that one old diesel bus has been destroyed.
Burnside has roughly calculated the difference in operating cost and estimates a savings of about 10 cents per mile for electric versus diesel buses. The longest of the five daily routes in Republic is 80 miles. He currently has 12 buses, with six still on the depreciation schedule.
His ideal fleet is five electric route buses, two diesel activity buses and two diesel spares.
“Our activities are 150 miles or more away and our electric buses won’t go that far,” Burnside said. “With nine buses on the depreciation schedule, we’ll be doing really well.”
Both men are optimistic about a future place for EV buses as part of the transportation solution.
“If EVs are going to work anywhere it would be on school buses,” McCain said, “with predictable schedules operating 180 days a year.”
