On the heels of its $72 million electric school bus rollout, the California Energy Commission (CEC) awarded Cerritos College $1 million to train the technicians and mechanics tasked with maintaining their new buses.
To ensure these workers have the necessary skills, the Cerritos project team has been developing curriculum around high voltage familiarization, heavy duty electrical and electrical for transit.
While the in-person courses were being developed, ATL offered foundational electrical training through a robust online platform. This unique training delivered short 5-minute learning sessions each day, adapting its content to fit each user’s knowledge level. Topics covered included multimeter fundamentals, battery service and testing, vehicle electrification safety for technicians, and more.
Nearly eighty (80) high school technicians and fleet managers from 27 districts across California took advantage of this training to build upon their electrical knowledge in preparation for the in-depth, bus-specific courses to come.
All the while, community college faculty experts were developing important hands-on courses to be offered in person once faculty were allowed to gather and travel.
The first course, High Voltage Familiarization, teaches technicians the fundamentals of electric school bus high voltage safety including ESB systems and components, dangers of high voltage, PPE, how to safe down an electric school bus and ESB safety systems.
After the course was piloted, technicians with electric school buses funded by the CEC were invited to attend the training at the 2022 Mobilize California Summit. Twenty-four (24) technicians were trained at the event with an important hands-on component.
Several community college faculty have been trained on the material so they can teach this class to high school technicians in their regions. Trainings across the state are being set up this fall.
Faculty on the ATL curriculum team have also developed a Heavy Duty Electrical class that has already been piloted in the Bay Area. This course will also be offered to high school technicians statewide through their regional community college instructors trained to offer it.
