Kansas Gas Service sees CNG proof at the pump

Kansas Gas Service sees CNG proof at the pump
By Jerry LaMartina
Metropolitan Energy Center, freelance writer

Back in November 2000, Kansas Gas Service made available to the public two compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling stations it had been using privately.
The stations, in Overland Park and Topeka, were the state’s first public CNG stations. By the summer of 2010, KGS saw such an increase in demand at the stations that it chose to upgrade them, says Wade Wright, KGS manager of market planning.
The utility company applied for and received a U.S Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities grant of $250,000 to help pay for the stations’ $585,000 upgrade cost. The grant money was part of a $15 million the DOE awarded in December 2009 and also benefited several other municipalities and companies in the Kansas City area and elsewhere that had implemented alternative-fuels projects. The grant was administered by Kansas City-based Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) for the DOE. All the projects supported by the grant constitute MEC’s Midwest Region Alternative Fuels Project.

The CNG station upgrades involved installing additional compressors, which increased fueling capacity from 27 gas-gallon-equivalents (gge) an hour to 63 gge an hour; increasing storage capacity from 240 gge to 432 gge; and replacing both stations’ two-hose, 3,000/3,600 pounds per square inch gauge (psig) dispensers and credit card-reading machines. KGS completed the upgrades in December 2011.
The upgrades’ value shows itself in the CNG numbers. KGS sold 158,237 gge in 2013, up 63 percent from 96,701 gge in 2012 and up nearly fivefold from 31,771 gge in 2010.
KGS spent some additional time educating local code officials about the equipment and demonstrating the systems’ safety, and the utility company was granted the required permits for the upgraded stations, Wright says.
As usage and traffic at both stations have increased, along with the appearance of more buses and larger vehicles, peak demand has become harder to keep up with. KGS hopes this paves the way for additional privately funded, public CNG fueling stations. Frito-Lay and Questar Fueling recently partnered to open a public station in Topeka designed for large-truck traffic, which has eased demand on KGS’ Topeka station.

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Happy Cab rolls around with MUD, flashes smile at CNG

Happy Cab rolls around with MUD, flashes smile at CNG

By Jerry LaMartina
Metropolitan Energy Center, freelance writer

A few years ago, Happy Cab Co. of Omaha, Neb., joined forces with the Metropolitan Utilities District of Omaha (MUD). Their goal: Develop a market for natural gas vehicles (NGVs) in the Midwest.

They made it, with help from part of a $15 million U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities grant awarded in December 2009. The grant also benefited several other municipalities, companies and others in the Kansas City area and elsewhere that had implemented alternative-fuels projects.

Kansas City-based Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) administered the entire grant through a contract with the DOE. All the projects supported by the grant constitute MEC’s Midwest Region Alternative Fuels Project.

Happy Cab received $593,000 from the grant and matched that from its own pocket for the project, whose total cost was nearly $1.2 million. The cab company trained its technicians in compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicle conversion to minimize labor costs and reduce overhead for the project. Their technicians then installed dedicated CNG kits – certified by the Environmental Protection Agency – on 54 Chevrolet Impalas and one Ford F550 flatbed tow truck and rescue fill vehicle that can do roadside, fast-fill refueling. Happy Cab put the Impalas into service in its taxi cab fleet in an effort to maximize the volume of gasoline that the CNG would displace.

And the company partnered with MUD to open a public CNG fast-fill fuel station in Omaha in
June 2011 at a former gas station owned by Happy Cab’s sister company, I-80 Fuel, at 5318 L St. MUD designed that station and another in Omaha with public access, at 63rd Avenue and Center Street.

John Davis, Happy Cab’s director of operations, says the project has displaced 75,000 gallons of gasoline a year since it went into service. That’s easy to like from an environmental perspective, and the company’s technicians and drivers also like the CNG-fueled vehicles because the technology was new to them, Davis says.

“Through the implementation of this NGV program, the techs have learned how to troubleshoot CNG-related issues and in some cases make recommendations for best practices that can and will improve reliability, performance or both,” he says.
The technicians and drivers think the vehicles are very comparable to gasoline models, Davis says. The only difference is the fuel and its delivery system.

“The big difference is being limited on refueling infrastructure,” he says. “There is a gasoline station on almost every corner. However, the drivers have to plan out refueling times for CNG. When comparing CNG with diesel on medium- or heavy-duty trucks, CNG is a cleaner-burning fuel, so it doesn’t create the heavy black exhaust gases or the distinctive smell that diesel leaves behind. The CNG engines are also so much quieter, so much so that when CNG garbage trucks go into service there have been reports of customers calling and saying they missed their pickup because they no longer hear the garbage truck coming down the block.”

Fleet managers like the alternative-fuel vehicles, too, Davis says, in part because CNG is about half the cost of diesel per gas gallon equivalent (gge). Medium- and heavy-duty trucks typically get eight to 10 miles per gallon, so the return on investment for them typically is greater compared with gasoline-fueled automobiles.

Because alternative-fuel vehicles and fueling stations do require an investment of money, Davis advises those who are considering it to start by doing their due diligence.

“I would recommend that the fleet manager seek out a fleet utilizing NGVs that are comparable to their own,” he says. “They need to know how many miles their vehicles average each week. They need to consider how long their vehicle may sit and idle at a job site and what type of fueling infrastructure they have in their service area.”

This due diligence from a financial and practical perspective pays off environmentally, as well.

“For a number of reasons, we need to do our part to lower our carbon footprint in our community,” Davis says. “This project was the right thing to do environmentally, and it made sense from a business perspective when leveraging the matching funds because it made the ROI attainable in four years.”

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Lee’s Summit R-7 takes up Newton, CNG in school

Lee’s Summit R-7 takes up Newton, CNG in school

By Jerry LaMartina
Metropolitan Energy Center, freelance writer

The Lee’s Summit R-7 School District has been studying the properties and behavior of electricity and compressed natural gas – by fueling a growing number of its vehicles with these two energy sources.

In December 2009, the district was awarded about $425,000 from a $15 million U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities grant awarded in December 2009. That grant also benefited several municipalities and companies that implemented alternative-fuel projects. The grant was administered by Kansas City-based Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) through a contract with the DOE. All the projects supported by the grant constitute MEC’s Midwest Region Alternative Fuels Project.

In October 2013, the district received an additional $300,000 from the same grant.

The Lee’s Summit Police Department started using the vehicles in the spring of 2010, says Mark Stinson, the city’s fleet manager. The department uses the vehicles for administrative purposes only, not for police cruisers.

Stinson hopes that CNG-fueled police-cruisers will hit the streets eventually. The current barrier to that: the necessary money to buy them.

That upfront cost compared with standard vehicles is typically the biggest barrier that municipalities and others face when deciding whether to integrate alternative-fuel technologies in their operations. It also was the biggest one Lee’s Summit faced regarding the four hybrid vehicles, the city said in its final project report.

The other two barriers were the vehicles’ smaller size compared with what the police department had been using, which raised some doubts in the drivers’ minds about whether the new vehicles would meet their needs for space to store gear; and uncertainty about whether hybrids had the same acceleration muscle and other capabilities as any other vehicle, according to the report.

The space-problem solution came by adding organizer boxes in the rear of the vehicles to better accommodate storing needed gear. And the uncertainty about the hybrids’ performance was erased by drivers’ time with rubber on the road, which convinced them that the hybrid had as much oomph as its gas-only counterpart.

Despite that biggest burden of upfront costs, the benefit of saving money over the longer term is clear. The vehicles will use an estimated 3,604 fewer gallons of gasoline during five years compared with standard vehicles, which equals an estimated savings of about $20,000, based on a $3.25-a-gallon average cost of gas, Stinson says.

And, integrating the hybrid vehicles into the police department’s fleet also helps open the door to expanded use of alternative fuels, he says.

“We continue to look at other methods like electric and CNG (compressed natural gas), but they’re contingent on the money available,” Stinson says. “What I tell other fleet managers I talk with is: It’s always worth looking at alternative fuels. You’ve got to explore other opportunities. As long as manufacturers will develop different configurations, it opens the door.”

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Electric, CNG vehicles fuel Lawrence’s drive toward alt-fuels

Electric, CNG vehicles fuel Lawrence’s drive toward alt-fuels

By Jerry LaMartina
Metropolitan Energy Center, freelance writer

The City of Lawrence, Kansas has taken actions for many years to protect the environment, including putting alternative-fuel vehicles into use.
In October, the city put into service a refuse truck fueled by compressed natural gas (CNG), with help from a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities grant of about $100,000. That money was part of an overall $15 million Clean Cities grant, awarded in December 2009, which also benefited several other municipalities, companies and others in the Kansas City area and elsewhere that had implemented alternative-fuels projects.

Kansas City-based Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) administered the entire grant through a contract with the DOE. All the projects supported by the grant constitute MEC’s Midwest Region Alternative Fuels Project.

This is the city’s first and only dedicated CNG truck, says Steve Stewart, Lawrence’s fleet manager. The grant would only fund dedicated vehicles. The city also has a bi-fuel F-150 pickup, which is its first CNG vehicle. Bi-fuel vehicles are capable of running on more than one fuel but only on one at a time.
The truck cost just over $185,000, Stewart says. The grant provided $50,000, and the city paid the roughly $135,000 remainder. The grant required that the vehicle use a dedicated fuel – in this case CNG – Stewart says.
The Clean Cities grant also paid for 50 percent of the roughly $99,000 cost of a CNG fueling station the city installed. This is Lawrence’s first CNG station.
The city said in its project report to Clean Cities that it had chosen to deploy the CNG truck to evaluate whether the alternative fuel would meet its needs and save it money in the long run.
“So far the truck is meeting our needs, and I anticipate a return on investment of the CNG package within the seven-year life projection of the truck,” Stewart says. “ROI on the fuel station my take longer. As with anything new or different, people are slow to embrace change. The driver is adapting to the difference in the vehicle and learning to accept it.”
The grant also helped Lawrence put into use an electric vehicle called a club-car carryall, Stewart says. It looks like a golf cart but has an enclosed cab and a pickup bed. Maintenance crews at the city’s wastewater plant use it to haul their tools and supplies during service calls.
“We had put a similar electric vehicle into use, but we couldn’t haul equipment with it,” Stewart says. “So we used the grant to help us replace a full-size Ford Crown Victoria to haul equipment. Terms of grant were that you had to replace a full-size gasoline powered vehicle with the electric vehicle. It worked out really well, to the point that we’re about to replace another vehicle with another electric.”
The city paid $9,000 toward the vehicle’s cost, and the grant kicked in $2,000.
Those dollars always have to be considered – unless maybe you’re Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or somebody they play bridge with.
“Fifteen years ago, we couldn’t get grant money to do some of this alt-fuel implementation,” Stewart says. “We try to stay in touch with alternative fuels and do what we can. Until this grant came along, we haven’t had the money to do some of this stuff.”
Some of that includes plans to use two other CNG trucks to water trees on city property, which will start in the summer, he says. The water will come from a former fertilizer plant, which has nitrogen-rich water in containment ponds and which the city is remediating in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency. The city must contain the water to keep it from flowing back into groundwater. The city also provides the water to farmers in the area for use on their crops.
That water will help those crops grow, and Stewart wants to see alt-fuels use to grow, as well. While that growth embraces the practical value of alt-fuel vehicles – they decrease air pollution and other environmental damage wrought by resource extraction, they typically decrease fuel costs, they decrease dependency on foreign energy supplies – Stewart emphasizes the practical need to think through the financials.
“My biggest concern with it would be planning your budget for your infrastructure and the vehicles that you need, and then scheduling to give yourself enough lead time so you can get done what you need to,” he says.
While he keeps his eye on the budget, he also turns it toward the future.
“I’d like to see these efforts move forward after I retire,” Stewart says.

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CNG blends right in with these Black Hills

CNG blends right in with these Black Hills

By Jerry LaMartina
Metropolitan Energy Center, free-lance writer

Black Hills Energy (BHE) knows the value of both supplying natural gas to its customers and using it as an alternative fuel for vehicles: It’s clean, plentiful, domestic and less expensive than gasoline or diesel.

Black Hills Corp., headquartered in Rapid City, S.D., supplies natural gas and electricity to more than 750,000 customers in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. BHE Nebraska Gas division is a subsidiary of Black Hills Corp., and is based in Lincoln, Neb.

BHE joined the effort to create a sustainable market for natural gas vehicles in the Midwest when it received a $250,000 grant as part of a $15 million U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities grant from December 2009. The overall grant also benefited several other municipalities and companies in the Kansas City area and elsewhere that had implemented alternative-fuels projects. The grant was administered by Kansas City-based Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) for the DOE. All the projects supported by the grant constitute MEC’s Midwest Region Alternative Fuels Project.

The grant helped pay for the second public compressed natural gas (CNG) station in Lincoln, which opened in October 2012. The Lincoln Airport Authority had also received a federal grant from Clean Cities and opened the first public CNG station in August 2010. BHE’s total project cost was $640,000.

BHE has created local partnerships and funded incentives for some Lincoln-based fleets and the city to adopt CNG, and the company is expanding its own use of CNG. BHE currently has 36 CNG-fueled vehicles in its 50-vehicle Lincoln based fleet, customer relations manager Paul Cammack says. So 72 percent of the fleet is fueled by natural gas.

While its natural gas vehicle count is rising, BHE’s fuel costs are falling. The company is saving an average of $100,000 to $150,000 a year by using CNG, Cammack says. As of Dec. 31, 2013, the company had displaced 35,000 gas gallon equivalents (gge) by using the alternative fuel.

“In addition to our own fleet, BHE partners are up to more than 100 CNG vehicles, and we expect it to more than double by end of this year. And those are just the ones we know about.”

Why does BHE embrace CNG?

“If you look at it from a purely corporate view, … each one of these vehicles is a new burner tip for natural gas,” Cammack says. “It’s great for our company. From a personal point of view, it’s also very important to know that CNG is good for the environment. Just because we can’t see smog doesn’t mean we don’t have poor air quality. And it’s important for our country to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

Cammack’s biggest surprise was customers’ reluctance to convert easily and readily to CNG.

“You can put the facts and figures in front of them, but sometimes, for whatever reason, they don’t pull the trigger and convert to CNG,” he said. “It may be an inherent fear of natural gas, especially compressed natural gas. And then there’s lack of infrastructure for fueling.”

When Cammack runs across somebody who’s thinking about making the CNG jump, his advice is to ease into the transition.

“We tell customers as we put all the facts and figures in front of them, ‘Just do one, just convert one vehicle.’ We’ll help a customer defray the cost of a conversion system on their first vehicle. Once they realize, ‘Hey, this works and I’m saving money,’ then they’ll be back to install more conversion systems on their own.”

When BHE completed its Clean Cities project report, the company said it would outsource the installation and maintenance of future CNG stations to a third-party contractor. Cammack says that’s because doing so helps BHE focus on its primary mission as a utility company.

“I think you’ll find that with most utility companies, selling retail CNG is just not in their wheelhouse,” he says. “Credit card transactions, maintaining a CNG station – that’s not part of how most utilities operate. I think it was helpful that some utilities like us built CNG stations – ‘walkin’ the talk’ – but now I’ve got contractors that want to put in stations.”
Cammack says the Clean Cities grant was invaluable.

“The grant helped the airport and the grant helped us,” he says. “We wouldn’t be where we’re at without that. The grant money has been the catalyst to make this happen. I’m very thankful for that. Actually, the whole community of Lincoln should be grateful.”

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MECs Annual Reception to be “jazzed” up this year

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Metropolitan Energy Center is adding a more musical touch to its annual reception this year. They’ll be doing their celebration in The Blue Room.

“I guess you can say we’ve jazzed it up,” said Warren Adams-Leavitt, the Energy Center’s Executive Director.

Once a year MEC, the non-profit dedicated to educating the community about the positives of energy efficient use, has a festive occasion to celebrate its successes and give its vendors, partners and sponsors a chance to network with one another. It’s a way not only to show supporters the in-roads MEC has made in the past year in its mission, but also an opportunity to increase membership.

This will be the 7th annual reception and each one has been a light-hearted evening of entertainment and fun. Organizers believe this event will not be any different.

Food will be served, drinks will be flowing and it’s hoped that a good time will be had by all.

Check your email and stay tuned on this site for more information.

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2015 National Drive Electric Week

National Drive Electric Week is a nationwide celebration to heighten awareness of today’s widespread availability of plug-in vehicles and highlight the benefits of all-electric and plug-in hybrid-electric cars, trucks, motorcycles, and more. National Drive Electric Week 2015 celebrations will take place Across the US and other countries. Check out the Events going on in the Greater Kansas City!

Stay updated about our Drive Electric events on our Events Page.

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The Last From Dave’s Desk

Did you know it was mid-2012 when I realized our area needed a local support entity with informationdave johnson on alternative fuel vehicles? And thanks to a similar belief from Kelly Gilbert and Kay Johnson, Central Kansas Clean Cities was born in January of 2014. This would prove to be an amazing chapter for my desk!

Now initially, I thought it would be fairly straight forward and somewhat easy, but Kelly was right, it was not as easy as I saw it. Fortunately, along the way, I received some tremendous help from some wonderful people! Each of our current and founding board members extended themselves and joined our good fight. I would like to thank Dennis Brown, Tim Hess, Alan Martin, Mike Coburn, Abby Brungardt, Brian Meiers, Kay Johnson, Dennis Hupe, John Schlegel, Steve VanderGriend, and Kim Hynes-Trinchet. Your support has and continues to be the life blood of the coalition.

But we are not done yet! We are just a stone’s throw away from submitting our request for designation package to the DOE! Not to mention all the education, events, and resource services still needing to be tended to! Thankfully we picked up Shawn Schmidt this past October through the WSU intern program. During our time together, Shawn demonstrated professionalism, responsibility, and interpersonal skills to be envied! Shawn recently graduated with his BBA from WSU and when combined with his uncommon qualities, it’s with great excitement for the future of our Central Kansas Clean Cities Coalition I announce that Shawn has agreed to replace me and pick up the now full-time Program Coordinator position. I am sure in a short amount of time you will see how very advantageous this will be for the organization. Please help me welcome Shawn to our family! He can be reached at 316-712-5051 or at Shawn@metroenergy.org.

As for me, besides being front line support for the coalition, there’s a little known tech company called Rental Geek. It’s a small three-man operation that has been working to digitalize the college town apartment rental process, and by Jove, I think we’ve done it. You can pick up and follow our story on social media. So this will be my last entry into this chapter of Dave’s Desk.

Viva AFV’s!

Dave Johnson

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Honda Civic Natural Gas Program

Steven Carter, Vice-President, Environmental Business Development Office, American Honda Motor Co., Inc writes a letter regarding the decision to halt production of the Honda Civic Natural Gas.

Read the Letter about the Honda Civic Natural Gas program

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Clean Cities Fuels Fix Magazine

The Fuels Fix is a collaborative effort of all the U.S. DOE Clean Cities Program coalitions in the United States working together to spread the word about actions that are taking place to reduce oil dependence, improve air quality and get advanced fuels, vehicle and vehicle technologies in use.
Fuels Fix is an online publication of Clean Cities Coalitions and alternative fuel news. The Ezine is a quarterly collection of stories from all over the U.S. about alternative fuels, hybrids, conservation and efficiency initiatives, emissions reducing technologies, and similar news from the coordinators themselves.

Read the Magazine

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