Granton gets $1.8 million grant for electric buses
Diesel fuel shortages, oil changes, engine and transmission repairs. These are just some of the things that can affect a school bus over the course of its lifespan of service at a school district. By this time next year, however, in Granton at least, it is hoped that such concerns about fossil fuels and related vehicular problems will be in the rearview mirror. That’s because the Granton School District has been announced this past week as a recipient of the EPA Clean Bus Rebate Grant.
Granton is one of 19 school districts in the state of Wisconsin, and one of nearly 400 school districts in the United States, to be awarded money for electric school buses from the EPA Grant in its first round of funding. A total of $5 billion is expected to be awarded to school districts across the country over the course of the next five years as the Environmental Protection Agency works to get diesel-powered school buses off the roads.
“This is the first of five rounds of funding they are doing,” said Granton School District administrator James Kuchta. “They are trying to get diesel buses off the road. There are a few ways they can do that. One is with electric buses, another is CNG, which is compressed natural gas, and LP for buses. The buses that are being replaced, as part of the grant, they are required to go into a salvage yard. They need to get off the road.”
Granton will receive $1,885,000 from the EPA grant, which will cover the cost of purchasing five electric buses for a total cost of $1,785,000 and related charging equipment at a total cost of $100,000. Of the five buses that will be purchased, Kuchta said four will be full-size, 72-passenger buses and one will be a smaller, 28-passenger bus.
“The grant is available for all buses in service that are pre-2010,” he said. “We have five buses that fit that criteria, four 72-passenger buses and one 17-passenger bus. A full size bus is $350,000 and a small bus is $285,000 and we get up to an additional $20,000 for each bus for charging stations, so the total amount we received amounts to about $1.885 million.”
Granton applied for the grant in August. As part of the process to apply, Kuchta said the school partnered with the Lion Electric Bus Company, a Canadian-based firm that exclusively makes electric-powered vehicles. Not as well known in the United States, Kuchta said the company has had a presence in Canada for the past decade and is soon to be expanding operations in the U.S. as interest in electric-powered vehicles grows worldwide.
“We applied with Lion Electric Buses in August, we wrote and sent in the grant through them,” he said. “We pulled together the information needed for the grant, which included bus titles and registration. Lion has been making electric buses in Canada and the U.S and are currently building a plant in Peoria, Ill. They will make electric trucks and buses and plan on making about 1,000 buses a year out of that plant. It will be the largest electric bus plant in North America. Other bus companies like International, Bluebird and Thomas, they make diesel buses and they are only starting to get into electrical buses which is why we went with Lion, they have been doing this for a while now.”
Now that the grant application from the Granton Area School District has been approved, Kuchta said the process will begin to bring those new electric buses to the school. The first step of the process will be for the Granton School Board to meet and approve the funding and discuss how to improve infrastructure to support the new buses. That discussion is expected to be held at the Board’s upcoming regular meeting on Nov. 14.
“The next step is that the Board approves the grant for the buses and charging station,” he said. “What exactly is to be done has yet to be determined. We will discuss at the latest on Nov. 14 at our regular meeting.”
That discussion will begin to answer some of the many questions that will come with the arrival of the electric buses. Buses running on alternative power such as electricity are not yet common in the U.S. -- Wisconsin will only have its first 72 electric school buses on the road through funding from the EPA grant -- so there is a lot for those first grant recipients to do to figure out their limitations, provide training and address other concerns with the new technology.
“Electric is a fairly new concept in the U.S.,” said Kuchta. “But what I’ve been seeing is that electric buses are the way of the future. Most companies now are producing electric vehicles. The government is subsidizing these programs and the EPA is giving us $2 million worth of charging stations and buses. All we need is a place to put them.”
Right now, finding a place to put the buses is the biggest challenge facing Granton. Unlike the rest of the schools in the area, Granton purchases its own school buses and has a garage on its campus to allow for maintenance and storage. However, the current garage has only two stalls to store buses -- not nearly enough room to house the seven buses the district currently owns.
“Our current bus garage can only hold two buses,” said Kuchta. “But these electric buses need to be stored where they can be charged and out of the cold. We will be getting $100,000 to use for infrastructure and we have some ESSER funds (federal money for pandemic relief) left over yet that we can use to build a new garage.”
Besides the bus garage, Kuchta said the question on most people’s minds will be related to the electric bus’s range and its ability to handle the cold of Wisconsin’s winters. Based on what they know, he said the electric bus has a 100-mile range on its battery, which takes between 4-6 hours to charge. If the buses are kept plugged in when they are not on their routes, he said there should not be any issues with buses getting stranded, as all bus routes in the district are less than 50 miles in length. For longer trips, he said there are options the district can use, but they have yet to discuss a course of action on what the protocol will be.
“There will be those who have some questions, such as will they work in the cold?” he said. “With the charging stations, we can keep them plugged in overnight for 13 hours and we have seven hours during the school day. It takes from four to five and a half hours to charge the busses and the battery packs can last for two days. All our routes are under 50 miles but for longer trips, there are things we can do for that. One is to use our electric buses and call ahead to see if there is anywhere that the bus can be charged. Two, we can keep our two diesel buses (the remaining two buses in Granton’s fleet that were purchased a few years ago and not eligible for the grant) and use them for longer trips or three we rent a charter bus like Progressive out of Spencer for those longer trips. If it’s too far, we simply can’t do it. Trips to Marshfield and back could be done with the electric bus, but I think Stevens Point and back might just be all the range it has.”
Due to issues with the supply chain, Kuchta said Granton is not expected to receive its electric school buses until late next year, which will give the district the time it needs to construct a new garage to house the buses. After they arrive, Kuchta said the district is required to keep and use the buses for the next five years, though the district will likely keep them longer as the batteries on the bus are warrantied for eight years.
“The batteries are warrantied for eight years, so if there is anything that happens to the battery it will be replaced,” said Kuchta. “A stipulation of the grant says that we have to use these buses for five years. The typical life of a bus is 12-15 years. In the Midwest, the buses get corroded. The engines don’t go bad, the bodies rust out.”
As the Granton School prepares for its electric buses, Kuchta said they will be working with the Neillsville School District to train drivers and mechanics. They have partnered for the past several years to provide school bus drivers for the Granton School District and are currently in the process of applying for their own electric buses through the EPA grant in its next round of funding. Already, he said a few bus drivers have gotten experience behind the wheel of an electric bus, and their positive response to the experience helps to show the benefits of going green.
“We work with the Neillsville School District for transportation with drivers and mechanics,” he said. “They will be applying for this grant in the next round and their director will be getting up to speed on how to maintain these buses. And there is actually a lot less to maintain on these buses, there is no engine or transmission to work with and there’s no oil to change. We had an opportunity last year to have some of our bus drivers go to Wausau to try and drive an electric bus and we had a few that went. They said that these buses have every bit of power as the diesel bus, but the biggest difference is that they are quiet. You don’t hear the diesel engine and they said that it was nice to not have that distraction. When changing over to the electric buses, it will be a little different for the drivers, they do handle a little differently. The accelerator kind of acts like a brake in that when you are not pressing it, you immediately start to slow down. That’s different from what you experience from a diesel vehicle. It will take a bit to get used to.”
