Electric school buses successfully operate in cold climates across North America
Electric school buses are successfully delivering clean rides for students in areas that consistently face extreme cold weather including Michigan, Utah, and Canada. That’s because today’s electric school buses — equipped with powerful batteries and thermal management systems — are designed to handle the tough cold and can be deployed successfully with proper planning, including route selection, charging scheduling and pre-heating.
Electric school bus batteries lose a percentage of their capacity in extreme cold weather, though the exact percentage varies based on temperature, terrain, heating source and other factors. So it’s crucial to plan routes and charging schedules with the winter months in mind, ensuring that buses have plenty of range to cover all necessary routes.
Already, school districts in cold weather climates are seeing great results when deploying electric school buses throughout the winter months:
- Garretson School District in South Dakota found that their three electric school buses are running strong in the winter in below-zero temperatures. The buses can travel up to 125 miles in optimal conditions and Garretson’s longest route is 47 miles, so the range lost in cold temperatures hasn’t been a concern when transporting students to and from school.
- Morris Area Schools in Minnesota are also happy with their electric school bus results. The buses have operated through several winters and while they lose about 10-15% of their battery capacity, including when temperatures drop below zero degrees Fahrenheit, they have been able to keep routes going. The superintendent is pleased with fuel savings, noise reductions and alignment with a community-wide focus on clean energy.
- West Grand County School District in Colorado have operated an electric school bus since 2020 despite being located in “one of the coldest places in the state.”Morning winter temperatures range between minus 30 degrees and 5 degrees Fahrenheit. The director of transportation says the electric school bus performs extremely well, and that it also is the best bus in their fleet with much lower operating costs than their diesel-burning buses.
These on-the-ground stories are backed up by real-world performance data collected over the past few years.BarreUnified Union School District (BUUSD) in Barre, Vermont participated in a one-year evaluation of their two Type C electric school buses by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Barre, located in central Vermont among the Green Mountains, has an average low temperature in the winter of 12 degrees Fahrenheit and an average monthly snowfall of 20 inches. Approximately 60% of the bus routes used by the electric school buses in the pilot were considered rural, with elevation changes up to 600 feet.
Despite harsh mountain winters, DEC found that the electric school buses in Barre performed well on daily routes. Barre’s electric school buses retained enough battery range, achieved emissions reductions when compared to their diesel-burning counterparts, and realized operational savings over the winter months. The report found that the average, annual real-world range between charges of the two electric school buses was 74 and 78 miles, a 25% reduction in range yet well above their average daily trip totals of 37 and 32 miles.
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Emissions reductions were considerable for Barre electric school buses when compared to both diesel-burning buses put out of serviceand new diesel-burning buses. The following tables present the well-to-wheel emissions reductions seen for Barre’s electric school buses compared to both scenarios. The differences in NOx and PM reductions observed between the two replacement options can be attributed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s stricter emission standards for NOx on new diesel-burning buses, reiterating the need to prioritize replacing the oldest diesel-burning buses in school fleets.
The operational savings ofthe electric school buses when compared to their diesel-burning counterparts were also seen as an advantage. Total dollar per mile savings were $0.24 to $0.25 in Barre, as detailed in the table below.
This finding is reinforced through similar school district experiences operating their buses in cold weather.
The school bus fleet manager at Havre School District in Montana, where the temperature reached minus 44 degrees Fahrenheitthis past January, found that their electric school bus’s per-mile cost is one-half or one-quarter of the cost for a gas- or diesel-burning school bus. In West Grand County School District in Colorado, the director of transportation reported their electric school busaverages 26 cents per mile and the diesel-burning buses average 58 cents per mile, which they noted does not include oil changes, filter, lubes and other maintenance costs that diesel-burning buses incur.
The evidencefrom cold weather communities nationwide is promising:electric school buses are performing well in extreme cold, and they’re ready to deliver clean rides to students in winter climates today.
