Image: The Mobility House
As students across the country head back to school, a quieter but equally important shift is happening in school bus depots: the rise of electric school buses equipped with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. These bright yellow vehicles, long symbols of American education, are now emerging as some of the most promising assets in our clean energy transition.
Why school buses? The answer is simple: they are the perfect V2G fleet. With large batteries, predictable duty cycles, and long idle periods, school buses spend much of their time parked — often right when the grid needs support most. Unlike diesel buses, which sit dormant when not in service, electric school buses can act as mobile batteries, discharging stored energy back to the grid during hot summer afternoons or extreme weather events. With nearly 500,000 school buses in North America, the potential for clean, reliable, grid-supporting capacity is enormous.
V2G News cuts through the hype and explains the transition from school bus V2G pilots to the most promising commercial opportunity for bidirectional charging.
From Pilot to Proof: Early School Bus V2G Pilots
Across the country, hundreds of electric school bus projects have launched in recent years — but only a handful have adopted bidirectional charging and true V2G functionality.
In Beverly, Massachusetts, Highland Electric Fleets, in partnership with Thomas Built Buses, Proterra, Rhombus, and Synop, worked with National Grid to deploy two bidirectional buses. In the summer of 2024 alone, these buses discharged more than 10 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy back to the grid across 32 events — roughly enough to power 800 homes for a day. To date, Beverly’s buses have already delivered over 30 MWh of clean energy. The summer of 2025 marks the fifth year of the electric school buses providing grid services and generating revenue for the school district.
On the other side of the country, Cajon Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) partnered with Nuvve, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Lion Electric to launch a five-year pilot in 2022. When a record-breaking heatwave struck California that September, Cajon Valley’s buses became the first in the state to export power to the grid under the Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP). With bidirectional chargers installed at its yard, the district showed how buses could both transport students and provide valuable emergency support — while earning revenue in the process.
Together, Beverly, Cajon Valley, and other early projects have moved school bus V2G from concept to proof — demonstrating technical feasibility, economic promise, and community value.
From Pilots to Scale: School Bus V2G Gains Momentum
With the first proof points established, school bus V2G is now moving beyond pilots toward commercial-scale deployments. The shift reflects not only technical feasibility, but also growing confidence from utilities, school districts, and private partners that V2G can deliver real value when paired with supportive policy and market structures.
Highland Electric Fleets has emerged as a leading driver of this transition. Building on its early demonstration in Beverly, Massachusetts, Highland is rolling out commercial projects across multiple jurisdictions — expanding in Massachusetts with deployments in Greater Boston and in Northern Vermont. This growth is now being supercharged by nearly $11 million in cost-share funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office. Through the Scaling Vehicle-to-Grid Integration Nationally (SVIN) project, Highland and its partners will launch 14 V2G school bus pilots across the country, providing the data and policy tools regulators and utilities need to accelerate V2G adoption nationwide.
California is also charting the path forward with larger-scale implementations. Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) set a national benchmark in 2024 with the country’s first fully electrified, V2G-enabled school bus fleet. In partnership with Zum, the district deployed 74 electric buses equipped with bidirectional chargers, creating a virtual power plant capable of returning more than 2.1 gigawatt-hours (GWh) annually to the grid. Beyond grid support, the initiative addresses equity head-on: Oakland’s students — many from communities disproportionately affected by pollution and asthma — now ride in cleaner, quieter buses.
Fremont Unified School District (FUSD) followed in 2025, commissioning a V2G system to participate in demand response events. Partnering with The Mobility House, World Resources Institute (WRI), and PG&E, Fremont deployed bidirectional chargers and advanced software to balance grid emergencies with route readiness. The project underscores how intelligent charging and aggregation can maximize both fleet efficiency and utility benefits. The Mobility House, which emphasizes open standards to ensure interoperability and scalability, has several school bus V2G projects in the pipeline — providing further evidence of the transition from pilots to scaled deployments.
Other states are also making strides. Dominion Energy’s program in Virginia is one of the nation’s largest electric school bus deployments, with every bus required to be V2G-capable. Dominion has already conducted test discharges, treating its fleet as both student transport and a long-term grid resource. Maryland has taken a policy-first approach, requiring utility-led pilots to incorporate V2G. At least one bus in the state has successfully discharged nearly 3 megawatt-hours to the grid, positioning Maryland as a promising market for future school bus V2G.
Together, these efforts show that the story of electric school buses is no longer just about pilots. With commercial deployments expanding across Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Virginia, and Maryland — and DOE-backed projects set to broaden the map even further — school bus V2G is steadily scaling into a viable piece of the clean energy transition.
Bumps in the Road
The path to scaling school bus V2G hasn’t been without setbacks. In 2025, Lion Electric, one of the earliest bus manufacturers to embrace bidirectional charging, shuttered its operations, raising questions about supply chain resilience and the stability of the electric school bus market. Around the same time, BorgWarner announced it was exiting the EV charging business altogether. For years, BorgWarner’s unit was the only commercially available bidirectional DC fast charger — a critical piece of equipment for making V2G projects possible.
While these exits underscore the fragility of a still-maturing industry, they also highlight how far the market has come. Today, school bus V2G is no longer dependent on a single hardware provider. Multiple companies now offer bidirectional DC chargers, and most of the major electric school bus manufacturers provide bidirectional capability either standard or as an option. Districts and utilities now have a wider set of proven solutions, creating more confidence that V2G can be deployed reliably and scaled across fleets.
Policy Fuel and the Road Ahead
None of this progress would be possible without strong policy support. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program (CSBP) has been a game-changer, with $5 billion over five years funding more than 8,500 electric buses across 1,200 districts. By lowering upfront costs, the program has jump-started a national market for electric buses and charging infrastructure. States such as New York and California have added their own funding streams to supplement EPA dollars, helping build a more sustainable school bus industry.
But deploying electric buses alone is not enough. The true value of V2G lies in its ability to provide grid services that generate revenue and offset costs — whether through demand response, capacity markets, avoided infrastructure upgrades, or utility programs that recognize the flexibility of these assets. Just as important, school bus batteries can serve as resilient backup power for schools and community centers during outages, delivering benefits well beyond the grid. Capturing this value requires more than technology; it demands regulatory support to streamline interconnection, create clear compensation mechanisms, and open pathways for fleets to participate in energy markets. Without these measures, the promise of school bus V2G risks stalling just as momentum builds.
A critical barrier is interconnection. For large fleet depots that effectively function as grid-scale assets, the interconnection process is often slow, costly, and uncertain. Long delays in energization undermine the business case, while school districts and utilities alike remain cautious, needing more evidence that buses can reliably deliver grid services and generate net benefits after accounting for costs. Overcoming these hurdles will require regulatory reform, utility engagement, and clear demonstrations of value.
From Beverly to Oakland, early projects prove that school bus V2G works — technically, economically, and operationally. The challenge now is scaling from hundreds to thousands of buses. With continued funding, fair compensation, and clear regulatory pathways, school buses can become more than just rides to school: they can be rolling classrooms for the clean energy transition.
