Microgrid Labs (MGL) is supporting Tucson Electric Power (TEP) with customer engagement and fleet transition planning for multiple fleets in the service territory in support of their bus and charger rebate program. The scope of the pilot project requires grid capacity planning, assessing beneficial electrification through managed charging, and the value of vehicle-to-grid. The second phase of this project will be to demonstrate vehicle-to-building bi-directional charging for resilience. The transit agency is operating electric buses and is increasing the number of EVs in the fleet; Three of five school districts have received awards for EV buses from the EPA and are in the procure/build phase.

Tucson Unified School District

The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) located in Tucson, Arizona, has a fleet of 90 diesel buses, and has been awarded a grant for the purchase of 10 electric school buses (ESBs) and charging equipment through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2023 Clean School Bus Grant Program. Under the newly approved TEP’s Transportation Electrification Implementation Plan, 6 of these ESBs will be deployed in a Vehicle to Building (V2B) pilot program to create a use case for electric school buses as distributed energy resource for emergency situations such as heat waves during which electric grid capacity is constrained, and determine the feasibility, cost, and benefit of V2X projects for both the utility and the fleet operator. The purpose of the Fleet Assessment with EVOPT was to assist TUSD with bus and charging equipment procurement decisions via route suitability assessment, charging scenario analysis, and power needs assessment. Using operational and financial data inputs provided by the fleet, the analysis investigates the feasibility of electrifying the entire school bus fleet, from both the technical and financial standpoint.