District hopes for electric school bus

Some students might get to ride on a battery-powered bus sometime next year, if a grant application is accepted by the bus manufacturer.

Grand Coulee Dam School District Transportation Director Wade Magers presented the school board Monday with the option to go electric with one bus in a little over 10 months.

Magers said there are pros and cons to getting one, but the financial aspect of the application makes it attractive.

Magers said the IC Electric School Bus (ESB) should go about 130 miles on a charge and recharge fully in about eight hours. The district’s longest city route is about 42 miles, and Magers said other bus managers advised him to figure 25% lower mileage than what is published.

Even with the grant, the district will still have to put out about $150,000 for it, less than the $200,000-$250,000 the district has been spending on a regular bus, Magers said. The 77 passenger EV bus, with a heater system installed, is worth about $480,000.

Districts in the Northeast have said the big ESBs don’t stay warm enough in the winter, so an extra heater that runs on regular fuel is a must in cold climates. That extra expense, however, would also let the bus run further in cold weather than it would without it, since the batteries would not be providing heat.

Magers noted that Republic, Curlew and Northport districts are all getting them, too.

The district would have to install the charging station at the bus garage, which Magers thinks will cost about $5,500 to buy the charger and $3,000 to install.

“The positive thing about it is we would be paid back the $480,000 over 13 years,” Mager said, referring to the state’s method of supplying buses to districts: they get reimbursed after the bus is depreciated over 13 years. “That was kind of the selling point” for other districts he talked with.

The school board voted to move ahead with an application.

“In the U.S., there now are nearly 5,000 electric school buses serving approximately 254,000 students in 49 states, Washington, D.C., American Samoa, Puerto Rico and seven tribal schools,” according to World Resources Institute. Two thirds of the buses were funded through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program with funds allocated from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The program aimed to replace diesel burning buses and has funded more than 8,000 ESBs in districts around the country serving more than 16 million students.