Projects

South Coast Air Quality Management District Grant For the Plug-In Hybrid Electric Medium Duty Commercial Fleet Demonstration and Evaluation Program

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) will manage a project to design, develop and deploy medium-duty plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV).

The program will develop a fully integrated, production plug-in hybrid system that can be used in Class 2 – 5 vehicles (those between 8,501 – 19,500 lbs gross vehicle weight). A demonstration fleet of 378 vehicles will be built in a production facility and delivered for nationwide testing in daily long-term fleet use; 107 of these vehicles will be tested by companies throughout the state of California.

Vehicles such as trucks, aerial lift utility trucks, work trucks, and shuttle busses will be tested. Truck bodies and vehicles to be converted include:

Ford F550 Utility "Trouble Trucks"
Ford F250 and F350 Pickup Trucks
Ford 450 and F550 work trucks with various body configurations
Ford F-series or E-series shuttle bus

The program will also develop and install “smart” charging infrastructure to support the vehicles. The objective of this program is to successfully deploy plug-in hybrid medium-duty vehicles in California.

Grant Amount

$5,000,000

Match Funding

$7,499, 350 from the project’s participants.

Project Participants

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), an air pollution control agency responsible for monitoring and regulating air pollution in the South Coast Air Basin and the Riverside County portion of the Salton Sea Air Basin, will be the project manager for this project.

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent, non-profit company performing research, development and demonstration in the electricity sector, will also be a project manager for this project and will be responsible for installing infrastructure.

Eaton Corporation, a diversified power management company, will supply the PHEV systems.

Altec Industries, based in Birmingham, Alabama, manufactures lift trucks, digger derricks, and specialty handling equipment used by electric utility, telecommunications, and forestry industries. It will provide PHEV System integration for this project.

Ford Motor Company, the second largest automaker in the US, will provide the trucks for this modification project.

Southern California Edison, the local utility, will evaluate the vehicles and their batteries.

Compact Power, Inc., one of the world's largest producers of lithium-ion batteries, will supply the batteries for the project.

Fifty different fleets will participate in the project nationwide. Companies testing testing the vehicles in California include,

For PHEV Utility "Trouble Trucks":

Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E)
Southern California Edison (SCE)
Sacramento Municipal Utilities District SMUD)

PHEV Shuttle Buses:

Orange County Transit Authority
California Air Resources Board
Federal Transit Administration

PHEV Service Trucks:

City of Redding Electric Utilities
Alameda Power & Telecom
Pasadena Water & Power
Riverside Public Utilities
SCAQMD
U-Haul
City of Shasta Lake

Project Benefits

This project will help California transition to cleaner, more efficient vehicles, cutting air pollution and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It will test the validity of using Lithium-Ion batteries for medium duty vehicles and produce guidelines for industry to use in adopting these more-efficient vehicles and installing the needed charging infrastructure.

The vehicle miles traveled – and therefore the fuel savings – will vary depending on how individual companies use the trucks or buses. It is expected, however, that the project will save, on average, 3.9-7.8 million gallons per year in 2015, and 30.3-60.5 million gallons per year in 2020.

This project creates a strong, very public fleet presence of plug-in vehicles in California. In addition to utility and public fleets, Altec will rent 15 – 30 PHEVs for their California facilities.

The smart charging technology being installed for this project will provide significant benefits for the state. These charging stations will be installed and serviced locally and are compatible with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems now being deployed by California utilities. Developing smart charging capability that integrates medium-duty PHEVs into the utilities’ AMI networks will reduce electricity costs and minimize the impacts that charging can have on the grid. This smart charging technology used is designed to match wind generation; a portion of the California fleet will conduct “wind integration” demonstrations designed to show the ability of these systems to synchronize with variable wind generation.

California electricity consumption for the vehicles in this program is projected to reach 5.8 million MWh in 2015 and 44.9 million MWh in 2020. With off-peak charging, the majority of this energy is assumed to be in-state generation.