Santa Barbara Zero-Emission Resilient Transportation Blueprint

Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District (SBMTD) has been an early adopter of electric buses, with a 100% zero-emission fleet goal by 2030 and a state mandate to do so by 2040. But since electric buses are largely dependent on the utility grid for fuel, a lengthy grid outage would effectively disable a fully electric fleet. This is a major concern for SBMTD—the Santa Barbara area is vulnerable to grid outages due to its reliance on a single set of transmission lines that traverse terrain with high natural–disaster risk. 
 
This study, prepared by CALSTART on behalf of SBMTD for the California Energy Commission, investigated the techno-economic feasibility of a microgrid and other resiliency measures to support SBMTD’s electric bus deployments and operations. This research comes to a sound conclusion that microgrids are both technologically and economically feasible.