Adding another school district looking to electrify its fleet to its growing list of customers, AMPLY Power has been selected to fully manage the charging of electric school buses for the Palermo Union Elementary School District.
The zero-emission commitment from the school lowers operating and fuel costs for the district to 50 percent of what it previously paid when charging its electric buses and reducing students and the local community's exposure to diesel particulate pollution.
The public school system in Northern California’s Butte County has contracted an energy rate of $0.10/kWh through AMPLY’s fully-managed, turnkey charging services. The cost of electricity without managed charging could be as high as $0.20/kWh.
In dollars per gallon terms, that energy cost means Palermo is effectively paying $1.19 a gallon to power its vehicles. AMPLY’s services for Palermo include supporting the sourcing of the final funding to secure the project, installing charging stations and onsite energy storage, warranty coverage, guaranteed uptime, a resilience plan and energy bill management through 2026.
Palermo’s electric bus fleet makes up 80 percent of its total fleet and currently includes five Lion Type-C electric buses, with a smaller Type-A Blue Bird electric bus planned for 2021. The project’s hardware includes six 16.2kW Level 2 chargers and approximately 700kWh of lithium-ion battery storage.
AMPLY helped move the project forward and advocated for the district to secure $49,839 in funding from the Butte County Air Quality Management District. PG&E also provided $35,488 in charger rebates and “make ready” Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) incentives, bringing the total funding amount to $85,327. This financial support eliminated the need for any upfront investment by the school district.
Palermo participated in PG&E’s EV Fleet program, which helps customers convert their medium-duty, heavy-duty and off-road fleets to clean electric vehicles. PG&E helped the school district by designing, paying for and building a large portion of the electrical infrastructure for their EV charging stations.
AMPLY's Charging-as-a-Service (CaaS) model goes beyond making it simpler for fleets to transition to electric. It assumes end-to-end responsibility for all charging aspects of the initiative, from cloud-based system design to installing local site controllers. Its proprietary back-end software and operational methods drive utility costs down by optimizing EV charging and other energy use at public and private depots. Coupling this process with utility service upgrades as needed enables the district to scale its fleet electrification program further.
