On Thursday, August 29th 2019, Dominion Energy and Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam announced a program to provide Virginia schools with 1,000+ electric school buses by 2025 with funding from the utility. The first 50 vehicles will be very soon, followed by 1000 electrified school buses, and a further filing in support of optionally electrifying 13,000 school buses by the end of 2030.
The grant is now open and available at https://www.dominionenergy.com/ourpromise/innovation/electric-school-buses Additional information will be forthcoming over the months and years ahead.
The program includes charging technology exploration to advance not just the vehicles but energy storage in the form of “vehicle-to-grid” innovations for deeply lowering fuel cost for all. The program is anticipated to add to the existing pump storage in VA (where we pump water up into reservoirs at night and release during peak for generation).
This program is supported by the Commonwealth of Virginia and is a wide partnership of stakeholders. The scope of this undertaking is significant nationally, and shows the leadership collaboration of utilities, fuel providers, technology integrators, and communities.
A small planning and demonstration component is provided by a multi-state team led by Virginia Clean Cities at JMU and a wide swath of organizations and leaders in the Mid Atlantic for planning, demonstration, and technology integration of these vehicles. The Mid Atlantic Electric School Bus Initiative includes Clean Cities Coalitions, bus manufacturers and sales teams, stakeholders, utilities, and state agencies in VA, DC, MD, NJ, and PA and was mentioned by U.S. Department of Energy earlier this month – additional collaborators are welcome to contact aharned@vacleancities.org and we are still early in the three-year process.
Livestream video of announcement on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/video/live/urn:li:ugcPost:6572863450605772800/
Dominion Energy’s official press release:
Photos: Always free to use without attribution or you can say “Virginia Clean Cities”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/101006382@N05/albums/72157710613173513
Additional Media Coverage:
https://wjla.com/news/local/virginia-school-buses-electric
https://wtop.com/virginia/2019/08/its-electric-virginias-yellow-school-buses-going-green/
Social media:
https://twitter.com/GovernorVA/status/1167210305413423105 Governor
https://twitter.com/LeHaDomEnergy/status/1167098338006765570 Dominion