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Florida Power and Light Makes the Case for Hybrid Electric Work Trucks Director of Fleet Services George Survant says agencies should look at gallons burned, not miles driven, when considering hybrid technology One of the largest and fastest-growing electric companies in the United States, Florida Power and Light Company (FPL) serves nearly eight million people, or roughly half the state of Florida. Last year, FPL was also of only 14 utilities in North America to test 24 International® DuraStar™ Series 4300 Hybrid Electric vehicles as part of WestStart’s Hybrid Truck Users Forum (HTUF), which includes truck users and manufacturers, technology companies, and the U.S. military. We recently sat down with FPL’s Director of Fleet Services George Survant, who also serves as chairperson of the HTUF Utility Working Group of WestStart, to discuss the company’s firsthand experience with these new hybrid trucks, as well as clear up the confusion in the marketplace regarding the real-world benefits of hybrid application work trucks. The following is an edited transcript of our interview. What are the biggest misconceptions out there right now in regards to hybrid technology when it comes to work trucks? “Some still believe that you have to be a high-mileage accumulator to benefit from hybrid technology. When we initiated [the HTUF pilot program] many of the early participants were looking at the miles their vehicles drove as if that was a significant indicator of benefits for the hybrid application. But you actually need to focus more on the gallons burned. “What we discovered through research and the pilot project was that the advantages of the initial hybrid offering were not in over the road trucking applications; instead, it was biased towards success factors in urban and city driving. The hybrid truck we use in utility applications gets one-third of its fuel reduction benefits in stop-and-go driving in an urban environment, which has potentially big implications for all city and municipal fleet operators.” Most of the hype surrounding hybrid technology focuses on fuel economy. But many government agencies have their own fuel stations and may consider fuel efficiency a non-issue because they only run trucks within local city limits. What’s their incentive to invest in hybrids right now? “Well, fleet managers tend to be fairly risk averse across the board. They’re good at idea sharing once someone has broken through the ice, but they want to see someone else prove it before they adopt new approaches to business. It’s the nature of the job: a constant scramble to match expectations with budget realities. “But from a hybrid perspective, with the fuel problems we’ve encountered the last few years, fuel budgets for all of us are expected to be very volatile. And that has a downstream effect on everybody’s sources of money. In the case of government, it’s the tax base. In the case of private industry it’s the shareholder and the customer. Municipalities don’t pay the taxes I pay [on fuel], but prices are still much higher than eight years ago. Even if you own your own station, you’re only manipulating the high-end margin--it doesn’t change the fundamental volatility. “Our role as leaders of the fleet industry is to find ways to mitigate the effect of that volatility on our fleets, and hybrid technology is a solution that’s there for us today. It has a well-grounded history, doesn’t require great departures or investments in infrastructure to support, and it gives us an ideal transition strategy to come up with transportation solutions in the future.” What other specific benefits have Florida Power and Light experienced during the pilot program that would apply to government customers? “The other big advantage is the onboard energy storage, which allows us to operate the truck’s working functions, like the boom and the hydraulic and tool circuits, without the main power plant being run. This has big benefits in noise-restrictive operating areas, urban neighborhoods, certain hospital zones. “Trucks that use PTO applications--those with a smaller power requirement, which is a large percentage of vocational trucks—can really benefit from the onboard energy storage. Plus, the emissions benefits are striking…the International trucks we run are run on a light biodiesel mix, and we get a further reduction in fossil fuels by doubling up on technologies.” How did your drivers respond to the hybrid electric trucks? “One of the things we were most pleased with is that they [the suppliers who built the test trucks, including Eaton, Altec and International®] made these trucks transparent to the user in regards to the operating characteristics. We didn’t want to put the burden on the operator to learn a very sophisticated system—we didn’t want them to go through a three–month training period to be able to operate these trucks. “What International and the other partners did is made these trucks, to a large degree, very much like those the operators were already used to…which makes the learning curve short, the application easy to adapt and makes training of the drivers simply a non-issue.” Many agencies are concerned about maintenance and reliability. How have the new hybrids performed? “So far, we’ve been very pleased…we’ve had very few difficulties within the entire fleet [of 24 hybrid trucks from the HTUF pilot program]. The best thing in many regards is that, for a complex vocational truck, we were able to use at least ninety percent of the standard truck in this application. “Many of the issues [usually associated with] supporting a technological leap forward are sidestepped here because the drive train is the only thing distinctly different. Ninety percent of the truck we already have parts for, trained technicians to deal with, and an existing factory support chain.” What are some of the factors that contributed to your selection of a truck manufacturer for the HTUF hybrid electric test program? “The [Diamond Logic™] multiplexing system that International introduced several years ago makes these trucks the ideal platform for this kind of a technological move. That’s a big feature…” “But one of the key reasons we selected International in this last bid package is because they have taken a tactic with their new generation trucks to make them more reliable and easier to repair. They’re focused on the life cycle costs of the truck by making it more reliable over its service life, which dovetails nicely with Florida Power’s goals for providing low maintenance, reliable trucks to keep the lights on in Florida.”
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