Californian green energy firm Nuvve partnered Canadian heavy-duty electric vehicle maker Lion Electric to launch vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology as a standard feature on zero-emission school buses.

Lion recently launched LionA, an all-electric mini school bus, on top of a portfolio of electric vehicles including the LionC and LionD school buses and a range of electric lorries. Lion shares its electric technology across its different vehicle platforms, which means the experience from its ten million kilometres of real-world operation are transferable to all its products.

With this collaboration, Lion’s buses and Nuvve’s V2G technology will be integrated, which will enable the batteries of Lion vehicles to store and discharge energy dynamically when plugged in and controlled by Nuvve’s software.

Nuvve and Lion have already partnered on projects demonstrating the feasibility of V2G for school districts and utilities in California and New York. A joint project in White Plains, New York, is in operation with bidirectional power flow.

“We have been designing around V2G implementation on our platforms so as to provide our customers with the most advanced technology currently available,” said Marc Bédard, CEO of Lion Electric. “Nuvve brings its cutting edge and experienced aggregation platform to complement our robust product offering, giving our customers added value in the process.”

Nuvve has over ten years of experience in V2G projects and deployments with operations across four continents providing several levels of services. V2G enables a more efficient use of energy on the site at which the vehicles are parked by intelligently managing the loads of energy with local buildings. Users can save money through reduced energy costs since EVs can be charged when electricity demand is low and costs are optimised.

Furthermore, Nuvve’s V2G platform offers aggregation services that pool together the collective energy stored in multiple EV batteries to create a virtual power plant (VPP). From this VPP, energy and power may be sold on energy markets, both at the local level and at the system level, creating additional savings.

Energy storage can increase the amount of renewable energy integrated onto electric grids to buffer intermittent wind and solar production and contribute power to the grid at times when it is most needed. Creating more resilient energy grids is a cornerstone of relying on renewable sources and can stave off energy shortages when faced with dramatic events such as the ones recently witnessed in California that led to rolling blackouts.

“Lion’s modular platform approach to designing electric vehicles provides an ideal basis for integrating V2G and enabling all of their medium and heavy vehicles to serve new purposes such as providing grid services,” said Gregory Poilasne, CEO of Nuvve. “There are many use cases for vehicles like school buses, delivery fleets and refuse trucks that are parked for many hours during the day and overnight that make their batteries ideal for what V2G can do to stabilise the grid.”

Nuvve is a San Diego-based green energy technology company whose mission is to lower the cost of electric vehicle ownership while supporting the integration of renewable energy sources, including solar and wind. Its proprietary V2G technology – Grid Integrated Vehicle (Give) platform – is refuelling electric vehicle fleets through bidirectional charging. Since its founding in 2010, Nuvve has been responsible for V2G projects on five continents and is deploying commercial services worldwide.

Last month, Nuvve announced a merger agreement with Newborn Acquisition, which will result in Nuvve becoming a listed public company at closing.

Lion Electric manufactures zero-emission vehicles. The company creates, designs and manufactures all-electric class five to eight commercial urban lorries and all-electric buses and minibuses for the school, paratransit and mass transit segments.