California school district to use solar, storage and electric buses to transform campus

Porterville Unified School District in California is building a solar, battery, and electric bus charging project with ForeFront Power, partly funded by a U.S. EPA Clean School Bus Program grant. The plan includes a 763-kW solar array on shade structures over two parking lots, paired with a 408-kW/1,632-kWh battery storage system. A microgrid controller will let the campus disconnect from the regular utility grid and run on its own solar and battery power during outages, including planned safety shutoffs during wildfire risk periods.

The setup will power 35 fast-charging ports for the district's future electric school buses, plus eight more chargers for other district vehicles. Two of those eight will support vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging, meaning the vehicles can send stored power back to the grid, not just draw from it. A charge management system from The Mobility House will coordinate how the buses draw power from onsite solar and batteries versus the regular grid.

For homeowners, this isn't a program you can sign up for, but it shows how the same technologies increasingly available for houses, solar panels, home batteries, and bidirectional EV charging, are being scaled up for schools and public buildings. It's also a preview of how microgrids and battery storage can keep essential buildings running during grid outages, which is the same resilience benefit homeowners get from a battery paired with rooftop solar.