A city experiment to test the efficiency of natural gas-powered vehicles is now under way.
City officials on Wednesday unveiled a new F-150 pickup truck that will serve as a test vehicle to determine whether money could be saved by converting much of the city’s fleet of 500 vehicles to run on compressed natural gas.
“I really want us to explore using natural gas for our trash trucks,” Mayor Bob Schumm said. “I think the payback can be very quick with today’s gasoline and natural gas prices.”
The city, though, is starting with a standard pickup truck that is used by a city streets supervisor. Black Hills Energy, the city’s largest natural gas utility, and Missouri-based Fuel Conversion Solutions donated the conversion kit that allows the truck to operate either with compressed natural gas or unleaded gasoline.
City officials will begin collecting data on the truck, including:
• Fuel mileage. The experts predict the truck will get the same fuel mileage with natural gas as it does with unleaded gasoline. If so, the city would be in line to save on fuel prices for the truck. Currently, it takes about $1.50 worth of compressed natural gas to equal one gallon of gasoline. It takes about $1.75 worth of natural gas to equal one gallon of diesel fuel.
• Reliability. The conversion kit required several new pieces of equipment to be installed on the truck, including a pressurized fuel tank, regulators and fuel injectors. City maintenance crews want to see the reliability of those systems before committing to add more natural gas vehicles to the fleet. They also want to test claims that the engines burn cleaner, and even need to have oil changes performed about half as often as a traditional gasoline engine.
• Fueling. The city will use a compressed natural gas fueling station located at Black Hills Energy’s maintenance shop in east Lawrence. The process to fuel the 20-gallon tank takes about 10 minutes, depending on how full the fueling station’s main holding tank is.
Part of the city’s research into compressed natural gas will examine the feasibility of building a larger fueling station that could quickly fuel large vehicle fleets.
Scott Zaremba, an owner of the local Zarco chain of convenience stores, already has a site plan approved by the city to build a retail compressed natural gas fueling station near Ninth and Iowa streets. Zaremba said he will be watching the city’s experiment closely to determine whether to move forward with project.
“Deciding when to do this is a chicken and an egg sort of deal,” Zaremba said.
He said he has talked to operators of several fleets of vehicles who are interested in trying natural gas but want to see it in action on the local level first.
“We need something like this to get us started,” Zaremba said.
In addition to the city truck, Black Hills Energy operates four vehicles powered by natural gas and has plans for more. Black Hills has had the Lawrence fueling station, which is not open to the public, for a little more than a year. Tim Hess, manager of gas marketing for Black Hills, said the station cost about $150,000. He said larger stations that allow for quicker fueling cost $600,000 to $1 million, depending on several factors.
Zaremba said true retail fueling stations, which will allow motorists to fill their vehicles in about the same time as with a standard gasoline pump, can cost even more. But Zaremba thinks the city soon will be in a position to know whether it wants to add more natural gas vehicles to their fleet.
“I think in the next year or less, they’ll have some good data,” Zaremba said.
Lanny Wagoner, a vice president with Fuel Conversion Solutions, estimated the cost to convert the city pickup truck was about $9,500 to $11,000. He said at today’s prices, it takes about 45,000 miles of use before the fuel savings have paid for the cost to convert the vehicle to run on natural gas.
Comments
just_another_bozo_on_this_bus 11 months ago
Short-term solution at best, as it merely exchanges one dirty fossil fuel for another, one set of externalized costs for another.
KRichards 11 months ago
It is cheaper and it comes from North America. Better than the middle east.
LesBlevins 11 months ago
My proposal to Lawrence would enable the city to avoid paying tipping fees on thousands of tons of municipal waste at the landfill and instead convert the material to electric power or biofuels such as bio-gas, biogasoline or biodiesel to power city fleet vehicles. I calculate the city could save around $750,000 or more per year in doing so and start-up a new industry in Lawrence that manufactures alternative energy technology but it seems city officials and city commissioners are unwilling to discuss the proposal and it seems to me there must be some underhanded dealings between the city and others causing the city to continually turn their backs on my proposal over the past decade.
Cant_have_it_both_ways 11 months ago
I'll bet there is data on the positive or negative numbers for these vehicles. Why does Lawrence continue to want to re invent the wheel? Guess they just need to pluck a few bills off that money tree that grows outside city hall!
LesBlevins 11 months ago
Fossil fuels are becoming scarcer as the consumption rates steadily rise over time. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Petroleum is already too valuable to burn for power generation as it is the feedstock for a great number of other products. All petroleum products, including natural gas, will be burned, because that is how the economies of the world are structured. But if CO2 levels rise to >.000004 from their current.00000375 PPB (parts per billion), and if more cataclysmic events begin to occur, world economies will be forced to change. If we decided to begin changing the energy infrastructure of the world today, it will be 20 years before a substantial change can be affected. Converting transportation to natural gas isn’t the long term answer because it too is a fossil fuel and such a change will increase prices for home heating fuel. Also at least one person is being killed in an environmental dispute around the world each week as the battle for land, natural resources and forests becomes increasingly violent, a report said on Tuesday. Global Witness, a human rights group focused on the exploitation of natural resources, said at least 106 people were killed in 2011 alone, nearly twice the death toll in 2009, in targeted attacks and clashes in resource-rich countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Peru. A total of 711 people were killed from 2002 to 2011 in such disputes, or more than one a week, it added, saying a culture of impunity pervaded which meant few convictions were made.
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