Transylvania County, NC is known as the “Land of Waterfalls” due to the 250 waterfalls scattered throughout the lush greenery of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Brevard, the county seat, is the kind of small town where the elementary school principal is also the bus driver. It’s also a place of technological innovation. Every afternoon, Ben Alexander, assistant principal at Pisgah Forest Elementary, climbs into the driver’s seat of an electric school bus and sets out on his route.
Alexander’s dual role isn’t just a quirk of staffing—it’s emblematic of a community where people wear many hats and do what needs to be done.
“They asked in the interview if I’d be willing to drive a bus,” he recalled. “I thought they were joking… I wanted the job, so I said sure.”
Driving an electric school bus wasn’t part of the original plan, but Alexander was all in once the district brought one on board. As a longtime hybrid vehicle owner himself, he saw both practical and philosophical benefits.
“I have a Chevy Volt… I wanted to try and find ways of saving money on gas, but also just have a cleaner car,” he said. “So when we got the electric bus, I said, you know, I’ll try it.”
It didn’t take long for him to prefer it.
“Pulling out onto a highway, it just has a lot more power to get up to speed than a traditional bus, and it also just has a better turning radius, which is helpful in certain situations. In a traditional bus, I have to back up on certain spots, and with the electric bus, I can just kind of zoom around.” – Ben Alexander, Assistant Principal, Pisgah Forest Elementary
But beyond the convenience, Alexander sees deeper value in the switch. “When the kids get on the bus, the exhaust is not blowing out on the students,” Alexander said. Alexander’s pre-trip inspection is quicker because the electric bus has no exhaust system, reducing the risk of leaking exhaust to zero.
For students, the change is just as noticeable. “They would prefer to be on the electric bus than the diesel, and maybe it’s because it’s a newer bus, I don’t know, but they seem to like the electric bus more so than the older bus, the diesel bus,” he said. And while he hasn’t looked at health data yet, Alexander says he’d choose the electric bus for his own child without hesitation. “The buses are built really safe in general… They’re pretty much like tanks,” Alexander said.
“If I had to have my child on a bus, I’d rather them be on the electric bus,” Ben Alexander, Assistant Principal, Pisgah Forest Elementary
This transition could have met resistance in a region where diesel engines and winding mountain roads are still the norm. But it’s been surprisingly smooth for the team keeping the buses running.
Adam Holcomb has been a technician at Transylvania for over a decade.
Adam Holcomb, a bus technician for Transylvania County Schools, has worked on every part of a school bus—from brakes and tires to engines and seats—for over a decade. He says working on the electric model is surprisingly painless.
“There’s maintenance once a year. It’s pretty simple. It takes about four hours to do. Other than that, brakes and tires just like a diesel bus,” Holcomb said.
As for concerns among fellow mechanics? Holcomb has a message: “There’s really nothing to be scared of. They teach you everything you need to know to make it safe before you work on it.” Through a day-long course offered by Carolina Thomas, the state’s electric bus provider, Holcomb learned the basics and was outfitted with safety gear. “Tools are the same… Gloves and some eye covering,” he said.
Electric school buses in this corner of Appalachia weren’t a political statement or a flashy initiative—they were a practical choice that turned out to be something more. “It just makes the whole process a lot quicker and faster for the driver, and the students seem happier,” Alexander said. “For me, it’s a no-brainer.”
In a county better known for waterfalls and small-town charm than innovation, the quiet success of electric school buses proves that rural towns can lead in sustainability and do it on their own terms. With more funding, Alexander says he’d love to see the fleet grow.
“Just knowing that the cost for fuel is going up in the future, it just makes sense to have an electric bus,” he said.
The post Electric School Buses Find an Unexpected Home in the Blue Ridge Mountains appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Electric School Buses Find an Unexpected Home in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Poland Powers First Offshore Wind, Vestas Expands in Japan
Allen covers Poland connecting its first offshore wind farm, Ocean Winds reaching full power in the Mediterranean, Stiesdal’s floating wind cost breakthrough, Vestas expanding in Australia and Japan, a federal permitting freeze stalling 250 US projects, and India passing 50% clean power.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Happy Monday, everyone.
A coal-dependent nation just plugged into offshore wind for the very first time. Poland’s power grid received electricity this past week from its first offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea. It’s called Baltic Power, a joint venture between Poland’s Orlen and Canada’s Northland Power. It began sending electricity from its 76 turbines to shore — about a 1.4-gigawatt site, enough to power more than 1.5 million Polish homes.
And this is more than just one wind farm. Poland is shifting its entire energy map. For decades, the center of electricity generation sat in the coal-rich south. Now it’s moving to northern Poland, to the coast. The country plans six gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. Equinor and Ørsted are both set to build along that Polish shoreline, and that’s good news. A new 530-million-złoty substation — about $140 million — is part of a plan to build nearly 5,000 kilometers of high-voltage lines to carry the power to southern Poland. Coal still supplies more than half of Poland’s electricity, but that number is about to change.
And now down to the south of France. Ocean Winds, the offshore wind company created by EDP Renewables and Engie, just reached full power at a floating wind farm in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s three 10-megawatt turbines sitting on semi-submersible floaters 16 kilometers off the coast. It’s a pilot project, but the lessons are real: 99% of the suppliers are European, 85% French, and it proves that floating offshore wind can work in deep Mediterranean waters.
Now we’ll stay with floating wind for a moment. Danish company Stiesdal Offshore says it has cracked the cost code, and this is important. The company modeled what it would take to build a full-scale floating wind farm — one gigawatt from a single port in a single installation season, loading out one turbine per week. And the cost? Less than one million euros per megawatt. That is on par with the jacket foundations used for fixed-bottom turbines in deeper water. About 80% of the world’s oceans are roughly too deep for conventional foundations. And if those numbers hold — one million per megawatt — floating wind just got a whole lot more investable.
Meanwhile, Danish Vestas is making moves on two continents. In Australia, the Danish giant bought a 272-megawatt project in Tasmania from Ark Energy. It’s called the St. Patrick’s Plains Wind Farm, and once built it would be the biggest wind project site in the state. Vestas now has more than 13 gigawatts of wind projects in its Australian pipeline. So the model is clear: buy early-stage projects, bring in investors and offtakers, then supply the turbines to build the farm. The turbine supplier is turning into a wind developer.
And over in Japan, Vestas secured backing from the Japanese government to build a wind turbine assembly factory. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has committed support for the facility. Vestas already has about two gigawatts of turbines installed in Japan, including machines at the country’s largest operational offshore wind farm. A factory on Japanese soil puts Vestas closer to an offshore market that is just getting started.
Now we turn back to the United States. In Minnesota, four wind energy projects are stuck in limbo. The Department of War has stopped completing national security reviews for proposed wind farms. Those reviews used to be routine. A new report says more than 250 wind projects are stalled nationwide because of it. In Minnesota alone, the four frozen projects represent over one gigawatt — that is more output than the state’s twin nuclear reactors at the Prairie Island Power Plant. So at stake is $1.6 billion in direct investment, about 5,600 jobs, and more than $168 million in economic impact. Nine clean energy groups have sued the War Department to break the logjam.
And over in Ohio, the state senate passed a bill that could block many new wind farms and solar farms. The bill says power sources must be available at least 50% of the time, and wind and solar on their own rarely hit that number. The Ohio Chamber of Commerce opposes the bill, and so does the grid operator. But the bill has passed the Senate and now heads to the House. And what a mess Ohio is creating for itself.
And finally, in India, for the second time ever, clean energy met more than 50% of the country’s electricity demand. It happened on July 6th. And in the first half of 2026, India installed nearly 29 gigawatts of new solar and wind combined. The country now has about 288 gigawatts of renewable capacity. A nation of 1.4 billion people just crossed the halfway mark on clean power. It’s pretty good — and they’ve done it twice now.
So here’s what to watch. The industry’s next chapter is not just about who builds the most megawatts. It’s about who controls the choke points: ports, permits, foundations, factory floors. The companies and countries solving those problems are the ones that will lead.
And that is the state of the wind industry for the 13th of July, 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.
The death of Lindsey Graham has brought out a curious mixture of responses.
Some are full of respect and kindness–even among those who disagreed with him at every turn, i.e., humanitarian progressives, believers in U.S. democracy, and the like. Are the motives of these kind people politically motivated? It’s hard to know.
There’s precious little ambiguity in the response at left of battered Capitol policeman Michael Fanone.
I’m not sure. Starting a pointless and illegal war that has no end in sight, at enormous expense? One that has debased and degraded our nation on the global stage? Crashing our economy for the common American?
Doesn’t sound like a winner to me. Could be wrong.
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