Canary Media: "The country's biggest electric school bus fleet will also feed the grid." Ritu Narayan, CEO and co-founder of Zum, noted last wk the official launch of the country’s first all-electric school bus fleet. 'By financing and installing thousands of electric school buses for the Oakland Unified School District, and tapping their spare battery capacity to support the power grid, the San Francisco–based, transportation-as-a-service startup plans to “become a fully fledged energy company,”' Zum [perfect name for buses for kid, right?] already 'provides transportation services and technology for school districts across the country, including some of California’s largest districts, such as those serving San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino.' "It hopes to electrify 10,000 school buses over the coming years, a move that will cut carbon emissions and reduce air pollution from diesel engines that harm students, drivers, and communities." But electric school buses are 2-3 times more expensive than diesel, partly supported by federal, state, and utility incentives, but now also reimbursement from vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, providing power to the grid at reliable times when the buses are not in service. They can 'soak up surplus solar power that floods California’s grid when it’s sunny out — and discharge it in late afternoons and evenings, when California’s grid faces its most severe imbalance of supply and demand.' It is still hard to quantitate how much the V2G services will be worth on the wholesale power market. They are 'working on a pilot dynamic rate that would reward them for charging when rates are low and discharging when rates are high,” said Rudi Halbright, PG&E’s product manager of vehicle-grid-integration pilots and analysis. As a result of all these factors, "the startup’s five-year, $11.2 million contract with Oakland Unified School District is priced at 'the same cost they have been paying for a regular bus.'” Winners all around, fueling transportation largely with sunshine. Not even counting avoided healh care costs.