Garrett Mitchell
Garrett Mitchell
The Greer CPW compressed natural gas fueling station.
Garrett Mitchell
CPW employees share the Green Fleet Leader Award from the Palmetto State Clean Fuels Coalition on Monday.
The award is presented each year to a stakeholder organization that best demonstrates leadership and excellence in clean transportation and alternative fuel activities in South Carolina.
"We've known we've been doing the right thing for years," Jeff Tuttle, General Manager of Greer CPW, said. "It's the right thing to do for the environment and I think Greer CPW has been a leader in that regard. Not only with its commitment to nuclear power, hydroelectric power, those types of technologies, but more specifically to compressed natural gas."
It is Greer CPW's work with CNG that helped earn the company the award. Greer CPW operates a fleet of 20 modified bi-fuel light duty CNG vehicles and also operates a CNG station that is open to the public at 115 Duke Street.
CPW claims it is offsetting the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from its fleet by approximately 29 percent over gasoline and diesel.
"What we try to do in converting vehicles, we make sure that it's the vehicles that are traveling the most miles each month," Rob Rhodes, Gas Department Manager, said.
"Those are the ones targeted for CNG. Turnaround in payment versus what it costs to convert these vehicles, you're talking somewhere around the range of $6,000 to $10,000 in conversion costs, and we can turn that around in five or six years,” Rhodes said. “We're comfortable with that. Plus, the CNG is so much easier on the engines. You can extend an oil change out to 10,000-12,000 miles which is unheard of."
Maeve Mason, who presented the award on behalf of PSCFC, said it was CPW's commitment to long-term environmental change that helped earn the honor.
"I think what stood out in terms of what Greer CPW is doing here is the fact that they've kind of embraced the bigger picture in terms of not only investing in the CNG station, but some of the idle reduction technologies as well as the GPS tools and technologies," Mason said. "They were willing to do all of the little pieces and parts if you will, and that was what set them apart."
More of those parts and efforts by Greer CPW include the usage of GPS monitoring software in conjunction with an in-house GIS database to dispatch work orders in an efficient sequence with less overlap and initiating a policy that mandates fleet vehicle drivers turn off their ignitions if the vehicle will be stopped for more than 10 seconds.
The fueling station is one of seven in South Carolina and also represents the collaborative effort of Greer CPW.
"It wasn't any individual department, it was all departments that were involved in this," Rhodes said. "From the electrical standpoint, to water, to gas, we had a lot of employees out here. Today you just saw a few of them, but we had in the range of thirty employees working on this thing at one time."
"We're going to continue to enhance the fueling station, continue to add to our fleet, but right now we're in the process of conducting an automated metering infrastructure pilot to about 1,000 meters where right now we use drive-by meters," said Tuttle.
"That way we don't have to drive a truck out to (meter) locations so we can further cut emissions and improve efficiencies overall. We're also completing a study right now of energy efficiency programs that we can implement for our customers,” Tuttle said. “So we're looking at both residential and commercial efficient types of lighting programs that will provide additional savings to our customers while cutting power consumption as well."