Electric school buses tapped to shore up fragile power grids amid heat

Source: USA Today/Reuters

Updated July 6, 2026, 11:19 a.m. ET


LOS ANGELES ‒ Schools are out for the summer, but the batteries in more than 200 electric school buses are helping some people in the United States find relief when temperatures soar. From California to North Carolina, yellow electric school buses are sending power back to the grid, easing some strain when demand spikes during heat waves. Hundreds more are expected to come online.

The stored energy in school buses and other electric vehicles is dwarfed by that of power plants. But efforts to use their batteries to return power to electrical systems, known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), show how EVs could fortify strained power grids.

Fully deployed V2G projects involving about 230 of the nation's roughly 6,700 electric school buses now have the capacity to supply about 8 megawatt-hours of power at a given time, according to the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Electric School Bus Initiative.

By contrast, PJM, the largest U.S. regional grid, will need more than 160,000 megawatts of power this week to meet peak demand for 67 million people. Much of the United States this week has been sweltering under record-breaking temperatures. "It's very early days. School buses will be a critically important backbone of V2G capacity," said Steve Letendre, senior adviser to the Vehicle Grid Integration Council trade association.

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/california/2026/07/06/electric-school-buses-power-grids-summer-heat/90817284007/