Cost Reduction of School Bus Fleet Electrification With Optimized Charging and Distributed Energy Resources
2/1/2020
This report presents considerations for electrifying school buses with an analysis of battery sizing to match bus-driving requirements. This study optimizes the electric school bus charging and vehicle-to-building dispatch to evaluate the potential to reduce the impact of the bus charging on a school’s electric utility bill. Further, it analyzes the effect of degradation on the school bus batteries to determine if the smart-charging and vehicle-to-building battery operation decreases the life of the battery.
Authors: Becker, W.; Miller, E.; Mishra, P.P.; Jain, R.; Olis, D.; Li , X.
Notes:
This copyrighted publication can be viewed on The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers's website.
Assessment of BQ-9000 Biodiesel Properties for 2018
1/30/2020
Critical quality parameters from BQ-9000 member companies were analyzed for calendar year 2018. The National Biodiesel Board provided blinded and randomized data sets on 14 critical metrics for biodiesel quality. This report summarizes the results of the parameters and found that overall, biodiesel readily met the ASTM D6751 specification limits in 2018.
Authors: Alleman, T.L.
Assessment of BQ-9000 Biodiesel Properties for 2017
1/30/2020
Critical quality parameters from BQ-9000 member companies were analyzed for calendar year 2017. The National Biodiesel Board provided blinded and randomized data sets on 14 critical metrics for biodiesel quality. This report summarizes the results of the parameters and found that overall, biodiesel readily met the ASTM D6751 specification limits in 2017.
Authors: Alleman, T.L.
The Impact of Uber And Lyft on Vehicle Ownership, Fuel Economy, and Transit Across U.S. Cities
1/22/2020
The past decade saw the advent and growth of ridesourcing, a travel mode in which a passenger uses a mobile device to request a ride with a nearby driver at a transaction price determined in real time by a transportation network company (TNC), such as Uber or Lyft. During this period, the daily number of Americans traveling in for-hire vehicles more than doubled. This study estimates the effects of TNCs on vehicle ownership, fleet average fuel economy, and transit use in U.S. urban areas from 2011 to 2017.
Authors: Ward, J.; Michalek, J.; Samaras, C.; Azevedo, I.; Henao, A.; Rames, C.; Wenzel, T.
Retail Hydrogen Station Reliability Status and Advances
1/21/2020
One of the most important emerging commercial markets for hydrogen is fuel cell-powered mobility including cars, trucks, and buses. These vehicles are refueled via a network of hydrogen fueling stations, with the highest number of U.S. stations being in California. The numbers of both fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and hydrogen stations have increased in the last two years, with anecdotal information from FCEV drivers indicating that station reliability is hurting the consumer acceptability of FCEV technologies. Therefore, this study benchmarks the current state of hydrogen station reliability in practice and presents on-going research that is investigating the failures that are contribute to hydrogen station reliability issues. This is accomplished with an analysis of operation, safety, and maintenance data from hydrogen stations and fuel cell electric vehicles to benchmark the maintenance and failure of hydrogen stations and their components. This analysis, of over 5,000 station maintenance events, presents the leading maintenance categories and failure rates, and is a prerequisite to the development of data-driven reliability improvement plans. We present a reliability growth analysis and on-going research into the root causes of failure for dispensers, a particularly failure-prone subsystem.
Authors: Kurtz, J.; Sprik, S.; Peters, M.; Bradley, T.H.
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This Reliability Engineering & System Safety article (106823) is copyrighted by Elsevier Ltd. and can be accessed through Science Direct.
Best Practices for Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Installations in the National Parks - Challenges, Lessons Learned, Installation Best Practices, and Recommendations for the National Park Service
12/27/2019
This report captures challenges, lessons learned, and best practices from recent National Park Service (NPS) electric vehicle supply equipment projects based on interviews with NPS employees and stakeholders involved in the projects. The report summarizes notable takeaways and makes recommendations to help ensure the success of future charging installation projects. Preserving this information will be valuable for informing and ensuring the success of future charging installation efforts at national parks, as well as for organizations outside of NPS. Note that this report focuses on light-duty plug-in electric vehicle projects, though NPS is also pursuing medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle efforts.
Authors: Kelly, K.; Noblet., S.; Brown, A.
Clean Cities Coalitions 2018 Activity Report
12/27/2019
Clean Cities coalition activities resulted in an energy use impact (EUI) of over 1 billion gasoline-gallons equivalent (GGE), comprised of net alternative fuels used and energy savings from efficiency projects, in 2018. Participation in vehicle and infrastructure development projects remained strong, as did alternative fuel use and resulting overall EUI. Clean Cities coalition activities reduce emissions as they impact energy use. Coalition-reported activities prevented 5 million carbon dioxide-equivalent tons of emissions (only greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions are reported here; criteria pollutants and other emissions are not included in this report). Coalitions were successful in securing project grant awards from numerous (non-DOE) outside sources. For other Federal, State, and local agencies and private sector foundations, see funding section on page 25. The 84 project grant awards in 2018 generated $251 million in funds from coalition members and project partners along with $1.9 million in DOE grant funds. Coalitions also collected $1.1 million in stakeholder dues and $2.9 million in operational funds from host organizations. In macro terms, this supplemental funding represents nearly a 7:1 leveraging of the $37.8 million that was included in the VTO Technology Integration budget in Fiscal Year 2018. Clean Cities coordinators spent nearly 121,000 hours pursuing their coalitions' goals in 2018. The average coordinator is quite experienced and has held his or her position for at least eight years. Coordinators logged more than 3,805 outreach, education, and training activities in 2018, which reached an estimated 35 million people.
Authors: Singer, M.; Johnson, C.
Preparing to Plug-In Your Bus Fleet: 10 Things to Consider
12/5/2019
The purpose of this guide is to identify some of the key areas where electric companies and their customers can work together to streamline the fleet electrification process. This guide is applicable to any company that operates a fleet, but it is particularly focused on medium- and heavy-duty vehicle fleets that likely will have higher power charging needs. Included in this guide is are 10 key considerations that fleets should know about electric companies and fleet electrification.
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This report is copyrighted and can be accessed on the Edison Electric Institute’s website.
Alternative Fuels Data Center
12/4/2019
The Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC) provides a wealth of information and data on alternative and renewable fuels, advanced vehicles, fuel-saving strategies, and emerging transportation technologies. The site features a number of interactive tools, calculators, and mapping applications to aid in the implementation of these fuels, vehicles, and strategies. The AFDC functions as a dynamic online hub, enabling thousands of stakeholders in the transportation system to interact with one another.
Reducing EV Charging Infrastructure Costs
12/3/2019
This report finds that while the cost of hardware components is already falling as manufacturers gradually find ways to lower costs, there are significant “soft costs” that need to be reduced. The costs of permitting delays, utility interconnection requests, compliance with regulations, and the reengineering of projects because they were based on incorrect information, among others, are frequently cited as more significant cost drivers than charging station hardware in the United States.
Authors: Nelder, C.; Rogers, E.
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This copyrighted publication can be downloaded from Rocky Mountain Institute's website.
Viable Class 7 and 8 Electric, Hybrid, and Alternative Fuel Tractors
12/1/2019
Trucking is at the start of significant changes in powertrains. The purpose of this report is to help clarify in an unbiased way the differences and similarities in a wide spectrum of developing powertrain choices facing fleets. This report focuses on the primary near-term drivetrain choices for the Class 7 and 8 North American heavy-duty tractor market.
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This copyrighted publication can be accessed through North American Council for Freight Efficiency's website.
Comparison of Well-to-Wheels Energy Use and Emissions of a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Relative to a Conventional Gasoline-Powered Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle
11/26/2019
The operation of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) is more efficient than that of gasoline conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, and produces zero tailpipe pollutant emissions. However, hydrogen production, transportation, and fueling are more energy- and emissions-intensive compared to gasoline. This report provides a well-to-wheels (WTW) energy use and emissions analysis to compare a FCEV (Toyota Mirai) with a gasoline conventional ICE vehicle (Mazda 3).
Authors: Liu, X.; Reddi, K.; Elgowainy, A.; Lohse-Busch, H.; Wang, M.; Rustagi , N.
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This International Journal of Hydrogen Energy article (Vol. 45, Issue 1, (2020): pp. 972-983) is copyrighted by Elsevier Ltd. and can be accessed through Science Direct.
Current State of Nitrogen Oxide Emissions from In-Use Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicles in the United States
11/25/2019
This report assesses the real-world nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions behavior of heavy-duty diesel vehicles in the United States, measured using portable emissions measurement systems (PEMS). This assessment is based on 160 PEMS tests from engines certified to 0.2 grams per brake horsepower-hour (g/bhp-hr) of NOx. The tests include data from eight manufacturers and 26 unique engine families certified between 2010 and 2016. Second-by-second data was analyzed to compare against the compliance evaluation results and to assess the impact of vehicle speed, vehicle type, and manufacturer on real-world NOx emissions.
Authors: Badshah, H.; Posada, F.; Muncrief, R.
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This copyrighted publication can be accessed on The International Council on Clean Transportation's website.
Electric Vehicle Capitals: Showing the Path to a Mainstream Market
11/20/2019
This briefing assesses metropolitan area-level data on plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) registrations and identifies the 25 largest PEV markets, which together represent 42% of new passenger PEV sales globally through 2018. To provide a blueprint for other governments, this briefing analyzes the incentives, charging infrastructure, and city promotion actions in these areas that are spurring PEVs into the mainstream.
Authors: Hall, D.; Cui, H.; Lutsey, N.
Notes:
This copyrighted publication can be accessed on The International Council on Clean Transportation's website.