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    Blue Bird supplying 60 Vision Battery-Electric Buses to huge Florida School District

    May 2, 2023
    The deal marks the largest electric school bus fleet purchase in Blue Bird’s history, the company says. BCPS operates over 1,200 vehicles with various propulsion systems, including 515 Blue Bird buses, which travel over 67,000 miles each school day
    Image credit Blue Bird
    Broward Press Release Bb 64510fb7969a0

    Bus manufacturing firm Blue Bird has secured a deal to supply Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) in Florida with 60 of its most advanced Vision electric school buses.

    Broward County is the sixth largest school district in the nation and second largest in Florida, behind Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

    The order comes as the school district looks to replace part of its diesel fleet with zero-emission vehicles through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Electric School Bus Project. The deal marks the largest electric school bus fleet purchase in Blue Bird’s history, the company says.

    “Zero-emission transportation means cleaner air to breathe,” said Matthew Stevenson, President and CEO of Blue Bird. “We have served Broward Schools for more than 30 years. We could not be more pleased to help the school district transition to electric buses and clean student transportation.”

    BCPS has ordered the buses through Blue Bird’s authorized school bus dealer Florida Transportation Systems in Tampa, Florida. Each Vision electric school bus can transport up to 72 students for up to 120 miles on a single charge. The charging time of the bus varies between three and eight hours, depending on the infrastructure, the Fort Valley, Georgia-based company notes.

    Blue Bird’s electric buses come equipped with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability, allowing BCPS to manage vehicle charging and return stored energy back to the grid as needed. V2G programs help improve grid resiliency, balance demands on the grid and lower the overall cost of electric school bus fleets for school districts.

    The school district received a grant of almost $15 million from the Florida Diesel Emissions Mitigation Program, which uses funds from the Volkswagen Settlement and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act to mitigate diesel emissions from mobile sources. Additionally, Florida Power & Light Company is providing the charging infrastructure.

    BCPS operates over 1,200 vehicles with various propulsion systems, including 515 Blue Bird buses, which travel over 67,000 miles each school day, transporting 54,000 students to and from schools.

    “Broward County Public Schools is excited to be the first school district in South Florida to pilot the use of electric buses in lowering emissions from our bus fleet,” said BCPS Superintendent Earlean Smiley. “This project has been in development for several years, and we’re thankful to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Florida Power & Light for providing the essential funding and infrastructure to make it possible.”

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.