A new fleet of electric school buses hits New York City streets

Ten new electric school buses are now running out of a depot in East New York, Brooklyn, part of a $9 million pilot by bus operator First Student and utility Con Edison. The buses charge at a station built aboveground rather than underground, since a jet-fuel line for JFK Airport runs beneath the site. That aboveground design saved about 20% on costs and cut a month off the installation timeline. Forty more electric buses are due at the depot by next June.

The project is also testing how these buses could help the power grid, not just draw from it. Some buses have small rooftop solar panels, and the chargers are built to send power back to Con Edison's system during periods of high demand, such as hot summer days when air conditioning use spikes. Con Ed expects electric buses, trucks, and other commercial vehicles to add more than 100 megawatts of demand by 2030, so tapping their batteries could help keep the grid stable.

New York State recently pushed back its deadlines for electric school buses: districts now have until 2032 to buy only zero-emission buses, and until 2040 for their whole fleets to be electric. First Student got about $2 million from New York State's energy research agency to help pay for buses in this project. For homeowners, there's no direct action here, but it shows how electric vehicles and buildings might eventually work together to support the local grid, and how state programs can help offset the higher upfront cost of electrification.