EV school buses coming to Reardan-Edwall

OLYMPIA – With cold weather and long distances, Eastern Washington would seem an unlikely region to find school district officials excited about electric buses.

But Reardan-Edwall School District Transportation Director Mike McCain is looking forward to the experiment.

“If it doesn’t work, we can always park it,” McCain said.

His district’s two electric school buses are still in production and scheduled for a March delivery. The district has also ordered one new diesel bus.

“We’ll be able to compare maintenance and operating costs side-by-side,” he said.

“Parking it” from about Nov. 1 to March 1 is what the Republic School District has had to do with its first electric school bus, put into service in 2021.

“The main thing is the cold weather when it’s hovering around zero to 10 above,” district Transportation Supervisor Jim Burnside said. “The Blue Bird will not keep up with the heating.”

McCain and Burnside both ordered the optional auxiliary diesel heater on International brand electric vehicle buses.

Grants will pay for the basic bus; districts will pay for optional upgrades including auxiliary heat, thicker insulation and automatic tire chains.

“We’re really lucky because we’re getting the grants,” Burnside said. “Outright buying electric instead of diesel would be unfeasible if had to come out of my budget.”

Depending on the options, the electric buses range from $389,000 to $455,000. A standard diesel bus costs $150,000 to $185,000.

RWC Group submitted federal and state grant requests for 33 buses for a group of rural districts to meet the 15-bus minimum required. RWC Group is a commercial truck and bus operation with 17 dealerships and 800 employees operating in five states.

McCain checked into getting his crew trained for EV bus repairs, but the systems are proprietary. Most maintenance will have to be contracted out since repairs are electrical rather than mechanical.

For the Republic and Reardan-Edwall school districts, getting two grants fully covered the cost of both the bus and the infrastructure improvements.

In Reardan, Avista Utilities placed a dozen conduits a little over two blocks from an upgraded transformer to eventually serve 12 daily bus routes. Wire has been pulled only for the first two charging stations.

One charger will be a slow, alternating current unit that requires about six hours to fully recharge; the other will be a fast direct current unit that requires one hour to recharge.

“The range should be about 200 miles,” McCain said.

He plans to assign one new EV bus to his longest route, covering 105 miles each day.

The district has 22 buses in its inventory, although only 14 are still on the state depreciation schedule. State depreciation payments go into a fund assuming the purchase of a replacement bus at the end of 13 years.

“We don’t collect enough in depreciation payments to buy enough replacements as buses go off the schedule,” McCain said. “We have to run our buses longer than 13 years.”

McCain is concerned about the 10-year battery life projected for EV buses mismatched with the 13-year depreciation schedule.

One incentive to adopt EVs for rural districts with many older buses is higher depreciation payments.

Districts must pay for the buses up front and only receive reimbursement after putting the new EV bus in service and providing proof that one old diesel bus has been destroyed.