The Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) – the public transportation agency serving Tampa, Fla., and the surrounding communities – has opened its new compressed natural gas (CNG) refueling station at 4305 E. 21st Ave. in Tampa.
Clean Energy Fuels Corp. designed and built and will operate and maintain the station, which will primarily serve HART's growing fleet of natural gas vehicles (NGVs). The agency intends to transition 100% of its vehicles to natural gas over time, beginning with 28 new CNG-powered vans in the coming weeks. About two dozen natural gas buses will come online in early 2015, with a total of nearly 60 NGVs in HART's fleet by the end of next year. More than 50 full-size buses are scheduled for conversion in fiscal-year 2017.
The new facility is equipped with four 300-hp compressors with four fast-fill CNG dispensers. The site can accommodate two additional compressors as the entire HART fleet transitions to CNG.
Clean Energy says HART's fleet will consume 230,000 DGE of CNG in its first full year of operations and about 725,000 DGE annually by 2018. The retail price of CNG at the Tampa station is $1.95/GGE.
