Bidirectional Charger Guide for Electric School Buses

Bidirectional chargers enable electric school buses to behave like energy storage systems, providing a source of power in times of elevated energy prices or grid disruption.

The bus can replace a diesel generator as a clean and silent form of backup power. Or, it can generate bill savings and revenue for the school district by sending power to the utility grid, referred to as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G). Bidirectional chargers are capable of both charging and discharging, making them more costly than their unidirectional counterparts. This makes it essential for fleet and facilities operators to match the equipment to their use case and model value stream estimations before purchasing.

The choice to opt for the additional functionality of bidirectional charging should be accompanied by a strategy to generate value. This value can fall into three categories: Backup Power, Bill Management, and Utility Program.

In this guide, we cover:

• Why Bidirectional Charging?
• How to Evaluate Bidirectional Chargers
• Charger + EV Interoperability
• Generating Revenue with V2G
• The Mobility House’s Technology: ChargePilot and Cascade Aggregator