Maria Garcia rides the school bus to Porterville High School every morning, just like thousands of other students in this California Central Valley town. But by the time she and her classmates graduate, their bus rides could look very different — powered by the sun and running completely silent.
Porterville Unified School District, a rural community about halfway between Los Angeles and Sacramento, is building one of the most ambitious clean-energy projects at any school district in the country. It's installing solar panels, massive batteries to store that energy, and 35 electric school buses — all while keeping the lights on during power outages.
The district signed a $3.5 million contract this month funded by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant. The system will include a 763-kilowatt solar array mounted on carports at the district's north and south parking lots, plus a battery big enough to store more than 16,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. That's enough to power roughly 1,300 homes for an hour.
The project will support 35 fast chargers for the district's electric bus fleet. It also includes eight chargers for the district's administrative vehicles — and two of those will have the ability to send power back to the grid, turning the batteries on wheels into a resource the whole community can use.
"Both V2G and microgrid technologies are integral to Porterville's resiliency strategy, which includes protecting the broader community in the event of emergencies and power outages," the district said in a news release.
The Central Valley has some of the worst air quality in the nation, which hits children like Maria hardest. Porterville Unified serves more than 14,000 students across 22 schools, and nearly 89 percent come from low-income families. Many of these kids rely on school buses just to get to class.
The district launched its Energy and Sustainability Program in 2019 with a goal of cutting energy costs and planet-warming emissions by 80 percent by 2030. Going electric is the centerpiece of that plan. Once fully complete, the system is expected to generate nearly 1.4 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity each year — enough to offset about 80 percent of the district's energy use, including charging all those buses.
Over 30 years, the project could prevent roughly 37,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. That's the same as burning more than 3.6 million gallons of diesel fuel. The district plans to have its entire bus fleet electric by 2035.
"These fast chargers will be connected to The Mobility House's charge management system, ChargePilot," the district said, which will help manage when and how the buses charge to save money and keep the grid stable.
For students like Maria, the biggest change might be one she can feel in her lungs — fewer diesel fumes hanging in the air she breathes.