The city of Tacoma, Wash., is in the early stages of shifting some of its municipal fleet to run on natural gas, and a first step in these plans includes the development of time-fill compressed natural gas (CNG) refueling infrastructure in partnership with TruStar Energy.
TruStar will design and construct the CNG capacity around its PFS Elite Series portable fueling technology. Tacoma will initially use a 100 DGE/hour configuration of the PFS Elite 225, integrated with 24 dual-hose time-fill posts. The CNG equipment is mounted to a mobile platform that can be lifted into place at a fleet's location and easily moved to a secondary location once the fleet grows beyond the fueling capacity of its initial PFS platform.
‘The PFS Elite Series fueling station fills a niche for companies looking to migrate to CNG fuel quickly and that have a smaller amount of trucks, limited space or smaller fuel consumption that would not warrant a traditional brick and mortar station,’ says Scott Edelbach, TruStar Energy's vice president of sales.
The city of Tacoma is eyeing the conversion of up to 80 vehicles to CNG. Its first natural gas vehicle – a heavy-duty front-load refuse truck – is already on order, and the city will be procuring CNG-powered tractors, roll-off chassis and rear-loading trucks in the next year.
TruStar says Tacoma's PFS will be in service in the first quarter of 2015.
