Ocean View School District in Oxnard, California, has selected The Mobility House to provide smart charging for the district’s new electric bus fleet project. The district has deployed four electric buses and four BTCPower chargers. The Mobility House’s energy management system, ChargePilot, will enable the district to harmonize its bus schedules, travel routes, battery life and local utility rates to minimize costs. 

Southern California Edison provided funding to deploy new charging infrastructure by upgrading the local transformer, adding a panel and meter, laying conduit and trenching. The utility also provided a 50-percent rebate for the chargers.

The Mobility House’s ChargePilot solution intelligently distributes available grid power to ensure that charging occurs at the most cost-effective times, using a modular cloud-based solution that’s designed to interface with a broad range of charging equipment and on-site facility systems. Existing customers include St. Louis’s Metro Transit and Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.

Deploying The Mobility House’s ChargePilot system will enable the Ocean View School District to schedule charging times in order to avoid utility demand charges, which is expected to save tens of thousands of dollars over the next few years. ChargePilot also provides a proactive alerting system that mitigates charging issues and collects charger usage data in compliance with the CEC grant requirement.

“This groundbreaking project for the district marks a notable milestone on our journey to electrify our entire school bus fleet and reduce pollution in our community,” said Ocean View School District Director of Transportation Bob Brown. “The Mobility House team and their wealth of experience was invaluable for navigating not only the development of a sophisticated charging infrastructure but a new funding landscape as well.”

“Our smart charging technology approach aligned fully with the project goals of creating an electric bus fleet that can grow over time,” said Zoheb Davar, Business Development Director for The Mobility House. “Now the district has the broadest options for future integration of different charging hardware infrastructure, knowing our interoperable charging management system will interface smoothly.”

Source: The Mobility House