March 3, 2026
Kevin Matthews, Head of Electrification, First Student
V2G News spoke with Kevin Matthews, Head of Electrification at First Student, about how school buses became central to the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) conversation, and what it will take to move from pilots to durable programs in which the nation’s fleet of school buses becomes an integral part of a less expensive, more reliable, and more resilient electric grid.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
V2G News:
To set the stage, can you provide an overview of First Student and its role in student transportation?
Matthews:
First Student is North America’s largest student transportation company. We operate roughly 47,000 vehicles across 42 U.S. states and eight Canadian provinces, serving approximately 1,300 customers. Per day, we transport 4.6 million students to school and home again.
Student transportation is a safety-driven business. We are entrusted with transporting society’s most precious resource. Everything we do starts with safety, and that’s actually what led us to electrification.
V2G News:
How did electrification become part of First Student’s strategy?
Matthews:
About five years ago, we began looking closely at emissions exposure from diesel bus tailpipes, not just for students and drivers, but for the communities we serve. That analysis led us to commit to transitioning our fleet toward electric buses over time.
Today, we have 470 electric buses operating across North America, approaching 10 million miles of service. By the start of the next school year, we expect to have well over 1,000 EV buses deployed, with hundreds more coming online shortly after.
We’ve secured roughly $600 million in grants and incentives across the U.S. and Canada to support that deployment. Electrification is now fully integrated into our organization, and we have in-house project managers, engineers, construction specialists, IT, and software teams dedicated to it.
V2G News:
Your personal path into V2G is unusual. Can you share that story?
Matthews:
I’m a history major by training, with a background in public policy and energy-related work, including environmental policy, finance, and state-level consulting. That mix of policy and economics turned out to be critical for fleet electrification, which is as much about business models and policy as technology.
Through work connected to the California Energy Commission, I was introduced to vehicle-to-grid concepts and had early conversations with Tom Gage and Dr. Willett Kempton. That’s when I began to see electric vehicles not just as transportation assets, but as grid resources capable of generating revenue.
The turning point came when I was standing in a parking lot looking at rows of school buses parked under a transmission line. It just clicked. School buses were the ideal use case: predictable routes, about 40 miles in the morning and 40 in the afternoon, and idle more than 75 percent of the year with large batteries, centralized depots, and controllable schedules. From a grid perspective, they check nearly every box.
From there, I became involved with Blue Bird Corporation and helped advance early electric bus development. In 2014, we secured California Energy Commission funding to build six prototype zero-emission school buses with TransPower, now part of Cummins Inc. Those demonstrations proved electric school buses could operate reliably, and began addressing how to reduce costs for school districts, including through V2G revenue.
When First Student approached me to implement electrification at scale, the opportunity was clear. If you’re looking for a fleet that can anchor distributed energy at scale, school buses are about as close to ideal as you can get.
V2G News:
Where do electric school buses and V2G technology stand today?
Matthews:
The buses themselves are improving rapidly. Reliability and performance have advanced significantly over the past several years, and today’s electric school buses are far more capable and dependable than the early prototypes we were deploying a decade ago.
The bigger challenge is interoperability. Charging hardware, fleet management software, vehicle communications systems, and utility signaling all have to work together seamlessly, from the grid operator sending a signal all the way down to the charger and into the bus battery. That full chain is still not as smooth as it needs to be.
Even within a relatively small group of manufacturers, getting chargers, buses, and software platforms to communicate properly is harder than it should be. We’ve seen certification delays, evolving standards like ISO 15118 updates, and real market churn, charger manufacturers entering the space and then exiting it, leaving fleets with unsupported equipment. On top of that, new products must navigate utility-approved equipment lists and UL certification processes, which can slow deployment considerably.
There’s also the cost premium. Bidirectional charging infrastructure can cost 25 to 50 percent more than unidirectional systems. That’s a meaningful barrier, particularly for school districts operating under tight budgets.
We’re far further along than we were in 2015 when we built our first prototype buses. But standards, communication protocols, and utility integration models still need to stabilize before V2G for school buses can move from technically feasible to operationally routine at scale.
V2G News:
How does bidirectional charging change the value proposition for electric school buses?
Matthews:
Electrification already delivers a compelling value proposition. There are clear community health benefits, reduced emissions exposure for children and drivers, quieter operation, and lower fuel and maintenance costs over time. For many districts, those benefits alone justify moving toward electric buses, particularly when supported by grants.
V2G adds a fundamentally new dimension: revenue generation. Today, a school bus creates value only when it is transporting students. The rest of the time, more than 75 percent of the year, it sits idle. V2G opens the possibility that those parked assets can participate in energy markets, providing capacity, resilience, or other grid services and generating revenue in the process. I have no doubt that school bus depots will ultimately become part of the energy marketplace.
But we have to be clear about our role. We are not a research lab. We transport 4.6 million children every day. Reliability is non-negotiable. If someone tells me a bus can generate $5,000 per year in grid revenue, that can’t be theoretical; it has to be dependable and structured in a way I can underwrite. I need to model that revenue, close the total cost of ownership gap between diesel and electric, and make long-term contractual commitments to school districts based on reliable revenue streams.
Right now, in most territories, that kind of durable, predictable compensation structure doesn’t exist. Without clear programs approved by utilities and regulators, rather than one-off pilots, it is very difficult for extremely cost-conscious school districts to justify paying 25 to 50 percent more for bidirectional charging infrastructure based on projected revenue that may or may not materialize.
Until revenue is bankable, V2G remains promising, but not yet financeable at scale.
V2G News:
First Student is involved in multiple V2G pilots. What have you learned?
Matthews:
We’re currently participating in nine utility pilot projects across the U.S., and they truly run the gamut. At the most basic level, some utilities simply want to test whether they can send and receive signals properly, can they dispatch a charger, can the charger communicate with the bus, and can the system respond the way it’s supposed to? In several of those cases, we’ve essentially said: if you’ll fund the charger, we’ll volunteer the bus. Those projects are about learning and proving that the communications chain can function from the utility all the way down to the vehicle.
At the other end of the spectrum is our project in Brooklyn with Con Edison. That effort is much more ambitious. It combines school buses, rooftop solar, and stationary battery storage into what is effectively a behind-the-meter virtual power plant and microgrid configuration. The project didn’t start as a technology experiment; it started as a real infrastructure constraint. The circuit serving our depot was already stressed, and upgrading transmission capacity would have been costly and time-consuming. Instead, we worked collaboratively to design a distributed solution that supports our fleet electrification needs while also providing resiliency benefits to the local circuit, which serves critical facilities like hospitals and first responders. It’s a good example of how V2G can emerge as a solution to a tangible grid problem rather than as a standalone pilot.
Across these projects, the challenges we discussed earlier continue to shape the pace of progress. Interoperability is improving, but getting buses, chargers, and software platforms to communicate seamlessly remains harder than it should be, particularly as standards like ISO 15118 continue to evolve. Certification and approval processes. from UL listings to utility equipment reviews, add time and uncertainty to deployments. Market churn has also played a role, with some charger manufacturers entering and then exiting the space, leaving fleets with unsupported hardware. All of this unfolds against a persistent cost premium for bidirectional systems, typically 25 to 50 percent higher than comparable unidirectional installations, reinforcing that scaling V2G requires not just technical validation, but durable market infrastructure.
But the most important lesson is economic. Despite participating in multiple pilots and demonstrating technical capability, I have yet to receive a check from a utility, an aggregator, or an ISO that says, “Congratulations, you’ve earned revenue providing grid services.” Until that changes, until compensation becomes durable and programmatic rather than experimental, V2G for school buses remains promising, but not yet proven as a scalable business model.
V2G News:
What needs to happen to move from pilots to scaled deployment?
Matthews:
Pilots are valuable. We want to participate. We’ve volunteered buses, worked with utilities, helped them test communications, and helped them understand operational realities. Those learning exercises matter. They help utilities, regulators, and legislators see what’s possible.
But pilots alone won’t scale this.
What we need are programs.
I need to be able to look at a utility territory and say, “If I deploy 40 buses at this depot, I know how many hours they’ll be available. I know what the program pays. I can model X dollars per bus per year.” If that revenue meaningfully closes the total cost of ownership gap between diesel and electric, then I can make strategic decisions. I can reduce or even eliminate reliance on grants. I can go to a school district with confidence and structure long-term contracts around something real.
Right now, we’re largely reactive. We deploy where grants and incentives are available because the TCO isn’t fully there yet. If compensation for grid services were clear, durable, and approved by public utility commissions, and supported by state legislatures, then V2G could become part of a deliberate deployment strategy rather than an opportunistic add-on.
V2G News:
How do you see the broader energy transition affecting this timeline?
Matthews:
I actually think the rapid growth in data center load may end up accelerating distributed energy solutions, including V2G. Utilities are beginning to recognize that they can’t simply build their way out of this challenge the way they have in the past. For decades, the answer to load growth was: build another power plant. I think there’s a growing realization that this time, that approach alone won’t be fast enough or flexible enough.
That opens the door to distributed energy resources. V2G and V2X offer flexible capacity that can be aggregated and dispatched. If utilities and regulators are looking for a controlled, predictable starting point for DER integration, school buses make a lot of sense. They’re centrally located, highly managed, and operationally predictable.
I used to say the school bus was the redheaded stepchild of the transportation industry. Now we may actually be at the tip of the spear. If utilities want to learn how to integrate mobile distributed energy at scale, school buses are a logical place to begin.
V2G News:
What does success look like for school bus V2G over the next several years?
Matthews:
Electrification itself remains compelling. When you electrify a school bus, you’re improving community health, reducing emissions exposure for kids, and lowering operating costs over time. That triple bottom line is what keeps us moving forward.
That said, progress has taken longer than many of us expected. I’ve been working on this since 2014. We are far further along today than we were then, but scaling V2G will require more than technical proof. It requires alignment, stable standards, smoother interoperability, more competition, and lower costs in charging infrastructure, and most importantly, durable compensation programs that make the economics work.
We’re fortunate that programs like the Clean School Bus funding have helped move electrification forward. But long term, school bus depots will need to function as energy assets in their own right. I have no doubt that school bus parking lots will become part of the energy marketplace.
The real question isn’t whether that happens, it’s how quickly utilities, regulators, and legislatures put the policy and economic frameworks in place to make that future investable at scale.
