UC-Irvine Campus Microgrid Powering New EV Buses added to Fleet

July 16, 2024

Electric bus manufacturer PhoenixEV delivered five new 40-foot ZX5 battery-electric models to the school over this last spring term.

Rod Walton, Managing Editor

The University of California at Irvine (UCI) campus launched its 20-MW microgrid several years ago to provide backup and islandable power for a number of buildings and other resources on and off campus.

Now it’s being put to work powering an acceleration in the already fast-moving UCI fleet electrification program. Electric bus manufacturer PhoenixEV delivered five new 40-foot ZX5 battery-electric models to the school over this last spring term.

UCI has maintained an electric fleet since January 2018 and, since then, has added 25 battery-electric buses logging more than 1.1 million total miles and nearly 1.5 million total passengers in the past academic year, according to reports.

“PhoenixEV is proud of our partnership with UCI,” Denton Peng, CEO of the bus manufacturer, said in a statement. “UCI is a forward-thinking university dedicated to sustainable transportation for their students and community.”

The campus microgrid charges those buses and many other facilities serving close to 50,000 people. The microgrid operates within an internal utility tunnel loop connected to the local utility via an on-campus substation.

The school’s Advanced Power and Energy Program also is working with outside developers and energy producers such as SunPower, Southern California Edison and Schneider Electric on pilot projects to create residential microgrids.

Overall, the UCI campus microgrid system includes a central gas-fired plant, a 60-kW electrolyzer, thermal storage, solar rooftop photovoltaic, and battery storage.

To track full coverage of microgrids for EV charging and university campuses, subscribe to MGK's free and tri-weekly newsletter

About the Author

Rod Walton, Managing Editor | Managing Editor

For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.

I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.

Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.