City hopes to have all electric buses in operation by early 2019
Operation of buses primarily dependent on when 200 kilowatt chargers are state certified
Having already received two zero-emission battery electric buses in early March, City Manager John Lollis said the Transit Zeroemission Vehicle Project is moving right along with three buses slated to arrive in June and the remaining six in July for a total of 11.
Lollis said the first two buses, or at least one of them, should be in service sometime this summer. He said the city made 90 percent payment on the two buses, and is holding onto 10 percent of the money until all items on what’s called a punch list are taken care of.
Lollis said a punch list is a list containing everything that is wrong with a bus such as a tear in the seat or tires that need to be replaced. He said such work is being done in a large hangar out at the Porterville Municipal Airport that Greenpower Motor Company Inc. has leased from the Tule River Indian Tribe.
When all items on the punch list are finished, Lollis said he will go before the Porterville City Council to release the last 10 percent of payment.
“I would say the [first two] buses are 95 to 97 percent right,” Lollis said.
Lollis said the plan is to have all Greenpower buses in operation by February of 2019.
However, Lollis noted that in order to meet that goal, the city needs 10, 200 kilowatt chargers, which he said would enable the buses to be fully charged in the sixhour window they would have when operating on the city’s nine transit routes.
Currently, Lollis said every electric bus in the U.S. is being charged with a portable charger. He said the problem is that a portable charger is not powerful enough to fully charge the city’s zero-emission battery electric buses in a sixhour time frame.
“You are going to charge a bus that is going to run all day in six hours,” Lollis said. “The chargers that are necessary to charge a bus in that period of time requires a 200 kilowatt charger, which is about five times more powerful than your standard car charger.”
Lollis noted that the city will need to have permanent infrastructure in place at the city’s corporation yard for the 200 kilowatt chargers. He said, however, that the city won’t be able to advertise for a bid for the construction of the electrification infrastructure until the State of California certifies the 200 kilowatt chargers, which he hopes will happen this summer.
“We can’t go to construction with a contractor until the chargers themselves are certified,” Lollis said.
Lollis said he is hoping the city gets reimbursed for the purchase of 10, 200 kilowatt chargers and the supporting infrastructure through a grant award from Southern California Edison (SCE). He said the 200 kilowatt refrigerator-sized chargers, which will all be under canopies at the city’s corporation yard, are $50,000 a piece.
“[Southern California] Edison has $4 million to reimburse agencies that decide to put in permanent infrastructure,” Lollis said. “They are guessing they are going to do about 20 chargers plus the supporting infrastructure in the area and we are hoping that we get half of them.”
Lollis noted that the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) has a mandate that every bus in the Central Valley is electric by the year 2030.
“So as you are replacing your buses, you are supposed to be replacing them with electric so that in the end you don’t have any combustion engine buses by 2030,” Lollis said.
To help meet that goal, Lollis said the city has gone after a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grant under the FTA’S Low or No Emission Vehicle Program to replace four Compressed natural gas (CNG) buses the city has operating with four zero-emission battery electric buses.
“So instead of replacing them with CNG buses, we want to replace them with electric buses,” Lollis said.
Lollis said all of the Greenpower electric buses the city has purchased so far have been paid for by the State of California. He said the four electric buses the city is submitting an application for is for federal funding, and noted that one of the stipulations when receiving funding from the FTA is that 65 percent of vehicles have to be constructed in the U.S., also known as FTA’S Buy America requirements.
“If a bus costs $100,000, $65,000 of that value has to be made in the U.S.,” Lollis said.
Lollis said the city is also in talks with the SJVAPCD about providing grant funds it has to be a match in the FTA grant because he said the FTA grant does not reimburse 100 percent.
“It is no more than 85 percent so you are going to have a 15 percent match,” Lollis said, adding that the percentage of reimbursement is dependent on the response the FTA gets for grant funding of electric buses. “We were told if they have a huge response they may only do reimbursement of 60 percent so you have to come up with the other 40.”
As far as Greenpower’s manufacturing facility, Lollis said the company is working on re-submitting plans. Lollis noted that if the city receives funding from the FTA grant, there is a one-year deadline to produce the buses, which will speed up the process of getting the manufacturing facility constructed.
“That’s what will drive the building of their facility in Porterville,” Lollis said.
Lollis said the deadline to submit an application for the FTA grant is in the first part of June. He said the city should be notified within two to three months if it has been selected or not.
Lollis noted, however, that if SCE does not reimburse the city for the charging stations and supporting infrastructure, he said the backup plan would be to fund them with money from the FTA grant.