24/7 Carbon-Free Electrified Campus Bus Fleet

Project team: Justin Luke, Mateus De Castro Ribeiro, Sonia Martin, Emmanuel Balogun, Gustavo Cezar, Ram Rajagopal, Marco Pavone, Liang Min

Stanford has completed the transition to 100 percent renewable electricity in March 2022, with on- and off-campus renewable electricity generation exceeding campus consumption on an annual basis. However, the campus is still plugged into the grid which carries carbon-based electricity. To completely eliminate emissions, Stanford’s next challenge is to match its electricity consumption with carbon-free resources at all hours of the year. To begin, this project will demonstrate a 24/7 Carbon-Free Electrified Stanford Campus Fleet by developing a scalable platform that intelligently coordinates solar, storage, electric bus route assignments, and bus charging. Additionally, the platform also optimizes for minimizing energy costs, providing system resiliency, and uniformly distributing vehicle utilization. This platform also serves as the first transferable model for bus fleets in school districts, corporate campuses, and municipalities to become 24/7 carbon-free. 

Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Accelerator Grants

Publications

• Towards a 24/7 Carbon-Free Electric Fleet: A Digital Twin Framework
  Mateus Gheorghe de Castro Ribeiro^*, Justin Luke^*, Sonia Martin, Emmanuel Balogun, Gustavo Vianna Cezar, Marco Pavone, Ram Rajagopal
  15^th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE 2023)
• Optimal Coordination of Electric Buses and Battery Storage for Achieving a 24/7 Carbon-Free Electrified Fleet
  Justin Luke^*, Mateus Gheorghe de Castro Ribeiro^*, Sonia Martin, Emmanuel Balogun, Gustavo Cezar, Marco Pavone, and Ram Rajagopal
  Applied Energy, vol. 377, no. 124506, 2025