Anyone familiar with American movies will know the school bus, the yellow one. If it was already iconic in the cultural world, it is now going to make a leap into the renewable energy sector as an energy transporter.
New York initiative. New York City is a fairly saturated place with incessant vehicle traffic, especially on the great avenue of Times Square. Faced with such a level of pollution and disastrous air quality, a new project has found the way to reverse this situation, replacing buses with electric vehicles with solar panels. However, it doesn’t end there, they will also become a mini power station that will supply power to the local grid.
The companies Con Edison and First Student have developed this idea that will have a fleet of 12 school buses, transporting Brooklyn students. Currently, four are already in operation and the rest are expected to come into operation next school year. This initiative has had an investment of nine million dollars from Con Edison.
But how will they work? The Con Edison company in a press release has detailed that school buses will produce zero emissions. Each bus will have 500 kilowatt rooftop solar panels and a 2MW storage system. In addition, since it is electric, it can also take energy from the electrical grid. However, the project differs from other systems because the energy from the bus is injected back into the electrical grid when necessary, thanks to bidirectional chargers. As the company comments, this resource will be necessary to cover the city’s demand peaks, so the bus will act as a battery or mini power plant.
Vehicles with solar panels. Although we have not yet seen cars with solar panels in our daily lives, some projects such as the Lightyear car are beginning to exist. This vehicle with solar panels had 70km of autonomy per day, but finally the company decided to dedicate itself solely to solar panels. The reason for this change was because the company considers that it is easier to design solar panels to adapt them to cars than to do the entire design and process.
Other forms not so visible. Recently, innovations in electric cars to increase autonomy do not stop growing. A project from Mercedes-Benz consists of a paint that integrates solar cells, which can capture sunlight and convert it into energy. According to the company, the system would add 20,000 km of autonomy per year in optimal conditions.
The city that never sleeps is making different changes in recent years to improve its city, such as the garbage system that was still at the antipodes. The new solar bus project highlights a system that will act as a power plant, returning energy to the grid at times of peak demand. Both companies hope to achieve a total fleet of 1,400 buses.
Image | WithEdison
Xataka | There are those who have proposed to reinvent the car sunshade with solar panels. They are not going to have it easy
Add Comment